Broadband, jobs and opioid addiction highlighted a Senate Ag farm bill hearing as lawmakers sought solutions for rural isolation, job losses, and despair. USDA rural development officials stressed the importance of their agencies’ programs for rural broadband, business investment, housing, utilities, and fighting drug addiction.
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Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett says Secretary Sonny Perdue, using farm bill resources and his Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity, aims to boost rural economic development. infrastructure, including broadband, and innovation.
Meantime, Rural Housing Service Acting Administrator Richard Davis says RHS is about more than housing loans:
RHS’s Community Facilities Program also supports daycare centers, charter schools, and higher-education to meet rural doctor and other skilled-worker shortages. The Rural Business-Cooperative Service runs loan and grant programs that attract private investment in business and renewable energy.
Also in the farm bill is the Rural Utilities Service. Acting Administrator Chris McLean says R.U.S invests in electricity, water, renewable energy, and telecommunications, including broadband:
But Ag Chair Pat Roberts warns again of a “very tough budget environment” to write the next farm bill, with no budget baseline yet, for 39 farm bill programs.
R.U.S.’s McLean has one answer for that, which is multiple uses for infrastructure to bring costs down, combining smart grid and broadband, public safety and broadband, and wireless service and broadband.