Menu
Turning small towns around
Dr. Weldon Sleight, the dean of the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture in Curtis, worries about the future of small towns in rural America.
"We're in trouble," Dr. Sleight told members of Southwest Nebraska Resource Conservation and Development gathered in McCook Thursday evening for their annual banquet. "I'm very concerned," he said, about declining population in rural counties.
While some simply sit and stew and wring their hangs, Dr. Sleight knows what it's going to take to reverse population loss trends. "Entrepreneurship is the answer," he said.
Dr. Sleight showed a picture of Mohab, Utah, an oasis between high, dry mountains. "Mohab has done some amazing things with marketing," he said. "That place is booming -- one idea at a time."
Closer to home, Dr. Sleight used the example of "Clear Ice," in Benkelman. Chris and Caroline Crossett moved to Benkelman to run the bowling alley. The bowling alley didn't work out, so the couple turned the alleys into a miniature golf course. That didn't pan out, so they concentrated on the diner, and then, opened a ice-making plant.
"Chris sells eight-pound bags and gives his customers 10-pound bags," Dr. Sleight said.
Did you know, Dr. Sleight asked, that a Canadian company has purchased every ice plant in Nebraska? Every plant except the Crossetts', he said.
Dr. Sleight said he wants Chris and Caroline to "take back Nebraska. This is the kind of entrepreneurialship we need." Eustis has "The Pie Lady," who sells 50,000 hand-baked pies every year. McCook has two dairies. "We need more dairies in Nebraska," Dr. Sleight said. And all-organic milk sells for twice the price of a non-organic product, he said.
Further away from home, but something that would work here, Dr. Sleight explained, Shawn Stolworthy of Rigby, Idaho, created "Maze Play," in which he designs corn field mazes on his computer in the winter, and -- for $8,000 to $12,000 a field -- transfers the design to fields in the spring.
"Think outside the box," he said. The finished, packaged "Craisins" product -- dried cranberries -- sells for $23,000 a ton.
NCTA is committed to the preservation of rural America, and Dr. Sleight said he wants to build an entrepreneurialship business development center on the Curtis campus. "I want to put entrepreneurialship in every classroom," he said, explaining that higher education spawns ideas and that the power of ideas is endless.
The goal of the entrepreneurial center is 150 graduates and 20 new businesses every year, Dr. Sleight said. "We need mentors, and we need ideas."
"You must have a healthy rural community to have a healthy church." That is the belief of the Rev. Judith Dye, who told RC&D members about her pilgrimage last summer to Turkey. Turkey is a country full of entrepreneurs, said the Rev. Judith Dye of the United Methodist churches of Wauneta and Palisade. It's a country filled with small shops and owners of small businesses.
The Rev, Dye said she was "ready for a big adventure" when a friend that she described as "a bald Zen Buddhist priest from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," invited her to tour Turkey with her and members of a Turkish western cultural center in Pittsburgh.
Rev. Dye said she was never scared, despite unrest within the country, but she was very curious about the "enormously complex" history of the country. "It has some very interesting neighbors," she said, with the former Soviet Republic on one side and Iraq, Iran and Syria on the other. "The country has 10,000 years -- 10 THOUSAND -- years of history," she said. "It is complex to say the least."
Rev. Dye said she was anxious to "touch base" with her Christian roots. "For 14 hundred years, Christianity reigned in that country," she said, but that Christians were also considered atheists because they didn't believe in the Roman gods.
She was most touched, she said, by the faith of Christians who retreated for months at a time to the underground "Cappadocia" lava caves as their enemies plundered their cities above.
The Rev. Dye said she came away from the adventure learning a great deal about Islam. "We need to be open-minded to people who bring us gifts of knowledge about other cultures," she said.
Lynne Wilson and Ted Tietjen, RC&D co-presidents, reviewed the highlights of late 2005 and 2006:
* November, 2005 -- "Food, Land and People," a program for teachers and supplemental curriculum to connect agriculture and the environment.
* January 2006 -- Hosted the annual retreat and an 11-state conference. Determined that areas of concern are land conservation, air quality, land management and community development.
* February -- The fourth-annual "Opening Doors" conference, and the new Southwest Nebraska Weed Management District to address salt cedar, red cedar and Russian olive infestations.
* March -- Support of Harlan-Furnas Economic Development; Red Willow County's eight-county household hazardous waste collection program; and the U.S. Highway 6 Association and the Route 6 Art Caravan.
* May -- The Tri-State Initiative to target economic development and agritourism scheduled in Imperial, but canceled because of bad weather. The Initiative was then disbanded.
* June -- Grant-writing workshops in Cambridge and McCook.
* August -- A cooperative agreement with the NRCS, through which the RC&D office in Cambridge hired an executive administrator, Jennifer Rittenhouse-ten Bensel. An integrated water management plan coordinated by the three Republican River Valley NRD's is designed to influence recharge water in the river valley.
* September -- Continued support of the "EDGE," -- Enhancing and Developing Growing Entrepreneurs -- program, which is responsible for creating 12 new businesses and 20 new jobs since 2003.