The Center for Rural Affairs was founded in 1973 by rural Nebraskans concerned about the loss of economic opportunity in agriculture and the decline of rural communities. From a base in northeast Nebraska, the Center has built a broad program to address the problems of rural people.

One of our first projects was a research report on the growth of large-scale hog factories, the public policies that favor them, and the threat they pose to family farms. That report, titled Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow?, laid the foundation for the Center’s continuing effort to keep hog production on family farms.

In 1975, the Center published Wheels of Fortune, a report on the impact of new irrigation technology on land ownership and use in Nebraska. The report anticipated what became a major controversy over land and water use, absentee ownership, and exploitative irrigation development of the Great Plains.

The Center moved into practical on-farm research in 1976 when it launched the Small Farm Energy Project. A three-year research and demonstration effort involving 24 Nebraska farm families, the project showed how small commercial farmers could reduce purchased energy inputs and improve net farm income by using alternative energy technologies.

In the third year of the project, the cooperating farmers consumed 13 percent less energy than a matched group and spent 17 percent less money on energy while maintaining production levels. Later, the project broadened its work to include all resources within the farm, especially water resources, which is the main agronomic constraint in the western edge of the Corn Belt.

In 1978, the Center established a continuing project to identify and reform biases against small farmers in various federal and state farm policies and programs. This project focused attention on tax and credit issues and involved a wide range of strategies, including organizing, advocacy, and litigation.

In 1982, the Center played a pivotal role in working with a Coalition with farm and religious groups to secure passage of “Initiative 300” by a vote of Nebraskans to restrict corporate farming and protect family farms and ranches as the basis of the state’s rural economy.

In 1987, greater emphasis was placed on the whole rural community of the agriculturally-dependent region of the Midwest with projects that examined the relationship between agriculture and the rest of the local economy and the needs of communities whose primary base was farming or ranching. In addition, projects developed around agricultural conservation and environment, research and technology, and incorporating sustainable agriculture in public policy, especially the 1990 farm bill.

The Center worked with other farm, rural, religious, and environmental organizations to develop and advance policy options supportive of family farming and sustainable agriculture. A project was also developed on world agricultural issues (initially on the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations) and how they might affect the Midwest.

Also in 1987, organizational changes were initiated that decentralized both management and program responsibilities. Project work became structured into two programs, each with its own leader, while a more participatory management system was implemented. The board of directors became more active in planning and evaluation.

In 1988, the Center bought and mortgaged the old hospital building in Walthill as a civic betterment project. It has been named theSusan LaFlesche Picotte Center, in honor of our nation’s first female Native American physician, for whom the hospital was originally built in 1912. The building has been developed as a community center for history and culture. The Center turned the hospital project over to the Susan LaFlesche Picotte Center, Inc., in 1993.

In 1990, our rural community work focused on demonstrating the effectiveness of community-based loan programs that nurture modest self-employment opportunities not supported by commercial lenders. Farm economic opportunity efforts were expanded beyond federal agricultural credit policy to transferring farms from retiring conservation-minded farmersand ranchers to like-minded beginners.

In addition, we began on-farm research to explore sustainable agriculture strategies for beginning farmers. Staff began “doing its homework” on global warming issues and how they might affect Midwestern farmers, and published the results in Mares Tails and Mackerel Scales in 1992.

The Center began efforts to increase opportunities for grassroots action in 1993. We established the Nebraska Issues Project to engage Nebraskans in securing a fair and progressive system of financing education that ensures all citizens access to quality education. We collaborated with the University of Nebraska and Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society to establish Nebraska IMPACT to assist farmers and other citizens in establishing local initiatives to improve the sustainability of their farms, land, and communities.

In 1995, we responded to the dramatic changes confronting the hog industry by establishing the Market Structure Project, to seek fair and open markets for family farmers. We expanded our work with community-based lending programs for small business to include work with rural schools to engage young people in creating entrepreneurial opportunities and a future for their communities.

The Center took two critical steps to ensuring its own long-term sustainability in 1996. We launched a campaign to establish an endowment, and we completed the process begun in 1987 by Marty Strange to reduce the Center’s reliance on its founders. Marty resigned as Program Director. Chuck Hassebrook, a 20-year veteran of the Center was named as his replacement.

The Center focused on the growing rural poverty in the Great Plains in 1999 with publication of Trampled Dreams: The Neglected Economy of the Rural Great Plains. We continued to pressure USDA to act on rules to bring back fair and competitive livestock markets. Our efforts to elevate family farm issues in the Iowa caucuses drew the Vice President of the United States to our farm issues forum and drew national media coverage.

Increased emphasis on building grassroots support which began in the late 90s started bearing fruit. In a few years, we increased the number of people who donated to the Center and the number who read our newsletter by more than 40 percent. Greater stress on communications gave us increased prominence in the state, regional, and national news media.

Longtime Administrative Director and co-founder Don Ralston left the Center in 2001. In 2001 and 2002 reform of the farm bill became central to our rural policy work. The farm bill contained many of our proposals for enhanced conservation, assistance for value-added agriculture, and help for beginning farmers and ranchers, including a pioneering green payment program, the Conservation Security Program and the Value Added Producer Grant Program.

We created a groundswell of grassroots support for provisions to cap farm program payments to large farms and create greater competition in livestock markets. Although the provisions were included in the Senate bill, they were not passed in the final farm bill. Nor was a provision we championed for a national rural microenterprise program that passed in the Senate.

In 2002, we launched the only rural Women’s Business Center in Nebraska through our Rural Enterprise Assistance Project. We published, with the assistance of the North Central Initiative for Farm Profitability, Profitable Practices and Strategies for a New Generation, outlining 18 case studies to help farmers and ranchers succeed. We also renewed our focus on global warming, beginning a demonstration project to help farmers learn more about carbon management. And we stepped up efforts to help family farmers build new cooperatives to reach high value markets.

The Rural Research and Analysis Program was created in 2003 and published a major study updating economic conditions in the region, Swept Away: Chronic Hardship and Fresh Promise on the Great Plains. We also launched a Living Livestock Loan program for beginning farmers in conjunction with Heifer Project International.

In 2004, the 30th anniversary of our founding, the Center moved to a new modest headquarters in the small farming community of Lyons, Nebraska. We invested in an accessible, state of art, brand new building on Main Street. To us the new building and our program speak volumes about our history and our future. We are in rural America for the long haul, and we intend to stay.

Great Plains and beyond debuted in late 2004. It looked at ideas that are working in rural areas, highlighting 14 projects from across the country. The Center’s work in the 2005 session of the Nebraska Legislature helped bring progress to the state’s rural policy. Successes included doubling funding for microenterprise development, creating the nation’s first microenterprise tax credit, gaining $850,000 for value added agriculture grants that increase self employment, and winning grants to communities for entrepreneurial development.

In 2005, we energized our effort to create a National Rural Action Network, thousands of citizens advocating for rural America. With supporters in all 50 states and the capacity to generate grassroots action from the Pacific Northwest to New Hampshire, the Center is uniquely positioned to carry this essential undertaking forward. We hired two full-time staff to develop the network.

Several other new initiatives took root in 2006. We won increased funding for the Value Added Producer Grants program, which makes grants to farmers and ranchers, and helped secure $5 million for research to strengthen small and midsize farms and sustainable agriculture. Our Conservation Security Program Hotline counseled farmers enrolling in the federal program that pays farmers to manage their land to protect the environment, and we used what we learned to persuade USDA to fix several problems. In Nebraska, we won expansion of the USDA organic transition incentives program to the entire state, and helped fend off Initiative 423, a rigid anti-sate tax measure to weaken education and shift the burden of financing schools onto the property tax.

Our 2007 Farm Bill proposals have already caught the eye of Congress and the media. The /files/images/Historydrumbeat for farm program payment limits keeps growing louder, and our longstanding advocacy on this issue has enabled us to develop new partnerships with groups such as Oxfam America. Most important, we keep building relationships with more farmers pursuing payment limitation reform.

The Center produces a variety of publications, including a monthly newsletter and research and analysis on emerging issues. We have added the Rural Brief to our regular publications to keep rural citizens informed and engaged on a broad range of issues. The Center for Rural Affairs website contains most of our publications: www.cfra.org.