Registration for the National Grange's New Hampshire Presidential Primary Legislative Fly-In 2008 is currently under way. The NH Fly-In will take place from December 27th through December 30th, in Manchester, New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Presidential Fly-In of 2004 was a great chance for Grange members to learn about, and participate in, the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Presidential Primary. This year’s event is hosted by the National Grange and the New Hampshire State Grange. As in the previous NH Fly-In, this will also give participants a chance to volunteer on a Presidential Primary Campaign of their choice. The NH Presidential Primary Legislative Fly-In is open to all Grange members.

The preliminary agenda includes the following events.

Volunteering for a presidential campaign is the opportunity of a lifetime!
Sign up for the NH Fly-In today!

Time is getting short! All National Grange NH Primary Fly-In participants must complete the basic conference registration form and submit it directly to the National Grange legislative department via e-mail, fax or regular mail by the new deadline of December 17, 2007. Fly-In participants are also responsible for their own travel arrangements. Airfares for flights into Manchester Airport will begin to increase sharply as the Fly-In deadline approaches. It is best to book early. The Highlander Inn, conveniently located near the Manchester Airport at 2 Highlander Way, Manchester, NH will be our headquarters for this event. Grange members attending this event who plan on staying at the headquarters hotel must contact The Highlander Inn directly to make their reservations at 1-800-548-9248. Reservations at The Highlander Inn must be made before December 17th 2007, to get the special National Grange room rate.

Look on the National Grange website for more information about the National Grange NH Presidential Fly-In, including registration forms. Please contact Samantha Johnson, Legislative Program Assistant, at sjohnson@nationalgrange.org or 888-447-2643 ext. 109 for additional information.

The National Grange recently joined with agricultural and other citizen’s groups urging the Senate Agriculture Committee to support meaningful commodity program payment limitation reform. The group endorsed a clean vote by the full Senate on the Dorgan-Grassley payment limitation proposal, unclouded by inclusion of fig leaf “reform” in the Committee bill.

In the letter, the coalition stated true payment limitation reform must include “hard” caps and effective limits on all payments and gains, including generic certificates and gains on forfeiture of commodities to satisfy marketing loans. It must include reform of the actively engaged in farming rules, including concrete, objective standards for active labor and management as recommended by the Government Accountability Office and the USDA Payment Limitation Commission. It must include a requirement of regular, continuous on-site involvement as well as rules that prevent one farmer from qualifying multiple corporations to collectively receive payments exceeding the limits. Finally effective payment limitations must incorporate real reductions in effective limits for all mega-farms, not just those operated by unmarried farmers.

In a joint letter signed by 97 separate grassroots family farm and rural public interest organizations, the National Grange called on the U.S. Senate to include new programs to assist beginning family farmers and ranchers in the 2007 Farm Bill. “ The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program is good public policy that addresses key obstacles to beginning farmers and ranchers and provides smart, cost-effective start-up support and education for America’s next generation of family farms,” the coalition letter explained.

The letter noted that, “There is a critical need to enact public policies to support beginning farmers and ranchers at this time. In 1978, there were 350,000 primary operator farmers 34 years of age and younger. In 2002, the Census of Agriculture reports that number fell to fewer than 70,000. With a diminishing number of beginning farmers and ranchers involved in agriculture coupled with the new opportunities that exist in this sector of our economy, the time is now to invest in the tools and resources that will help and encourage the next generation of family farmers.”

The letter called for support for two distinct programs to assist beginning family farmers and ranchers. In July 2007, the USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Advisory Committee recommended passage of a Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, with funding at $20 million per year. This Advisory Committee recommended program would focus resources on delivering practical training and mentoring for beginning farmers and ranchers as well as building the kind of community support that is the most effective way to help new farmers and ranchers succeed.

The second critical program to support beginning farmers and ranchers would be the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Individual Development Account Pilot Program. This program would provide targeted financial training and matched savings accounts to assist those of modest means to establish a pattern of savings and build equity in a new farming operation. “Asset-building strategies have proven to be successful public policy, and it is time for agriculture to share in this success,” the letter explained.

In conclusion the letter urged the members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, “ In the 2007 Farm Bill, we need effective action. Not just words, but deeds. You have the right policy language and the support in the countryside. The opportunity is clear, and the time to act is now to provide a real commitment of dollars.”

The National Grange, League of Rural Voters, and National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) joined together to write an op-ed on rural communities across the country that will be left behind if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has its way. The FCC recently indicated that it plans to cap the rural portion of the Federal Universal Service Fund (USF) as a first step toward long-term “reform.”   A cap not only moves the country in the opposite direction of reform, it also freezes investments wireless carriers make in new rural infrastructure development.

The USF was created to ensure that rural communities have access to the same telecommunication services found in urban areas. Over the past several years, wireless carriers have used funds from the USF to improve and expand wireless service in rural areas of the country that wouldn’t otherwise support investment.  

Despite this progress, a digital divide clearly exists in this country, and there are many areas where a strong cell phone signal is a rarity. Unfortunately, instead of working to improve wireless access in rural communities, the FCC wants to shut the door on rural America – and its sixty million residents.

The current lack of high-quality wireless coverage in rural areas is a critical public safety issue. First responders, law enforcement officials, and rural citizens all depend on high-quality coverage to reliably deal with issues ranging from natural disasters, to automotive emergencies to domestic violence.

A cap on the Universal Service Fund puts the safety of rural residents at stake. In emergency situations, reliable wireless service can literally mean the difference between life and death. This proposed cap also poses a significant economic threat. Access to wireless telecommunications is essential for communities to thrive and compete in the marketplace. It is difficult for businesses to be competitive without something as basic as reliable cell service.  

The op-ed article concluded by urging members of Congress to oppose the discriminatory cap that hurts rural communities across the country stating a cap on the Universal Service Fund will adversely impact rural public safety, stifle rural economic development and exacerbate the urban/rural technology divide.

Leroy Watson, Legislative Director of the National Grange, recently presented remarks at a Joint Meeting of the Environment & Energy, Regulatory Affairs, and Telecommunications &-E commerce Committees of the United States Chamber of Commerce on Broadband and Rural Economic Development. Mr. Watson began his presentation by reminding the audience of a recent demographic milestone. Last September, the population of the United States reached 300 million people. Over the next 40 years, no community in the United States, large or small, will be exempt from the effects of population growth. Mr. Watson said, “If we act now, no rural community will be pre-destined to miss out on the prosperity that two new generations of rural small businesses and farm entrepreneurs can bring to our nation.” e un Union

In the view of the National Grange, in order to prepare our rural communities for an influx of new residents in the 21st Century and to create a nurturing environment for creative and productive entrepreneurial activity in those communities, access to infrastructure and basic public services as well as integration into the national and international “web” of commerce will have tremendous impact on the future prosperity of our nations family farms and rural communities.  

Mr. Watson closed his formal presentation with some basic principals and benchmarks that the National Grange thinks will be critical to the successful deployment of broadband that will facilitate widespread economic development in our nation’s rural communities.

 Broadband must be for everyone. Rural broadband deployment and usage based on a model of wiring only critical facilities such as hospitals, schools, libraries, police stations, or even publicly available WiFi “hot spots” is insufficient. To be truly revolutionary and liberating to the entrepreneurial spirits of rural America, broadband must go to every home, every business and every farm.

Deployment and access to broadband for all Americans, especially rural Americans, is clearly a more pressing policy objective than systematically and prescriptively trying to define the rights, privileges, obligations and responsibilities of the various participants and stakeholders who already have, or who provide, high speed access to the Internet. Internet regulatory proposals such as “network neutrality” are grossly premature at this point, in part, because without universal access to broadband, the perspectives, observations and experiences that rural consumers eventually will have with this technology will be left out of the debate. It is the height of hubris to assume that the experiences of urban and suburban users of broadband services should constitute the entire universe of valid policy perspectives on this issue.

We need to see both the forest and the trees at the same time. By that he meant we need better and more detailed data about broadband deployment in rural and underserved communities that includes both aggregate numbers of users as well as places where use doesn’t exist.

We need to find creative strategies to generate additional demand for broadband services and to aggregate existing potential demand for broadband services in underserved rural communities. It is unreasonable for either private or public entities to invest new resources in rural broadband deployment if they are asked to rely on the “If you build it, they will come” business model.

When it comes to generating additional demand for broadband services, we need to aggressively engage third party payers and third party service providers in the discussion of the advantages of rural broadband deployment. So far much of the discussion about demand generation has focused on “killer applications” directed at individual consumers as the driving force in increasing broadband demand. But each rural consumer, small business and family farm is actually a nexus of commercial relationships and not just an autonomous economic decision maker. Telemedicine is just one example of where third party payers and service providers can and should be involved in helping generate demand and facilitating broadband deployment in order to improve service to rural customers. But there are a host of additional private and public service providers who serve customers and clients in rural communities who need to be as aggressively engaged in the debates about rural broadband deployment.

Fifty organizations, representing U.S. farmers, ranchers, meat processors, food producers and exporters, urged Congress to approve the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA). The PTPA provides immediate duty-free access to Peru’s market for two-thirds of our farm and food products and opens the market for the remainder of U.S. agricultural products by the end of a transition period.

The U.S. market is already open to most products from Peru on a duty-free basis under the Andean Trade Preferences Act, which Congress overwhelmingly approved. The PTPA ensures our ability to compete fairly in the Peruvian market with the country’s other trading partners, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the European Union and Mexico. Peru already has signed free trade agreements or is in the process of negotiating free trade agreements with these countries.

Consumer-oriented food exports to Peru have been growing, with the U.S. representing Peru’s fourth largest supplier. The United States will see increased prospects for a wide range of other high value U.S. food products. However, U.S. meat exports have enjoyed only modest success in the Peruvian market. This is expected to change under the PTPA not only because of the rapid removal of tariffs on most meat, livestock and poultry products but also because of the important commitments Peru has made on sanitary and phyto-sanitary barriers. As part of the PTPA, Peru agreed to recognize the U.S. meat inspection system as “equivalent” to its own and to permit imports from plants approved by the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service.

The exports generated by PTPA will have a positive affect on the bottom line of U.S. farmers and ranchers. Some estimate the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement will increase U.S. farm exports by $705 million. Additionally, USDA estimates that for every million dollars of agricultural exports, 13.4 jobs are created. Therefore, when fully implemented, the PTPA will provide more than 9,000 new jobs from increased agricultural exports.

The Coalition urged Congress to provide U.S. food and agriculture the same trade benefits that it already has extended to farmers and ranchers in Peru. They concluded the PTPA provides such reciprocal trade benefits and will generate U.S. exports, create U.S. jobs and enhance the economic well-being of U.S. farming communities.