Fertile Ground USA...Celebrating the people behind the plow

Program Will Benefit Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses
By Elisha Greeley Smith, elishas@cfra.org, Center for Rural Affairs 

A new farm bill devoid of real reform for farm programs and livestock markets does have an important silver lining.  It includes the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program which will help rural entrepreneurs and small businesses get started and stay in business.   This innovative program will receive at least $15 million over the next four years. The program will provide rural entrepreneurs with the skills and technical and financial assistance to start and operate rural small businesses.       

Entrepreneurship and asset-building are rural development strategies that have the potential to repopulate rural areas, create genuine opportunity for rural people, and address the continuing and growing economic disparity between rural and urban areas of the nation. Initiatives such as the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program recognize the importance of entrepreneurship as a rural development strategy and provide the opportunity for rural people and rural communities to leverage the spirit, creativity, and opportunities entrepreneurship creates.       

The Center for Rural Affairs released an analysis last year that found that fully funded, the program in its first year would create $21.2 million to $22.9 million in additional income in rural households and potential economic outcomes in rural communities of $54 million to $132 million.  
The Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program will help provide rural people the opportunities they deserve.    

Read more about microenterprise: http://www.cfra.org/policy/micro

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