Friday, April 15, 2016

Vilsack, others to discuss cost of rural poverty at forum Monday; available via audiocast

The Farm Foundation will host a free interactive forum, "The Cost of Poverty in Rural America," Monday from 9 to 11 a.m. EDT at the National Press Club in Washington. The forum, which will consist of PowerPoint presentations and a question-and-answer session, will include Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack; Purdue University Extension Director Jason Henderson and William Bynum, CEO of Hope Enterprise Corp. and Hope Credit Union, a regional community development financial institution and policy center in Jackson, Miss.

To register to attend the event, click here. To register to participate in the audiocast, click here. For those unable to attend in person or listen to the live audiocast, an audio file of the discussions will be posted in the Forum Archives after the event.

"Rural poverty is a complex, multi-dimensional problem for which there are no simple answers," said Farm Foundation President Neil Conklin. "Decades of change in the structure of rural economies, accompanied by demographic changes, have raised the economic prospects in some areas while others have been left behind. Rural poverty, which is so at odds with our sometimes idyllic vision of small town and rural life, makes us uncomfortable and tempts us to ignore the issue. That is not the answer. With this Forum, Farm Foundation seeks to bring many voices into a constructive conversation of how we attack the cancer that is poverty in rural America."

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