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Friday, June 24, 2022

Quick hits: House panel votes to keep firms from 4 hostile nations from buying farms; broadband boondoggle a caution

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

In a first-of-its-kind agreement, the Biden administration has signed a deal with five Native American tribes to give them more control over day-to-day management of federal land (Bears Ears National Monument in Utah). The deal marks "a new chapter in the federal government’s often-fraught relationship with tribes," Maxine Joselow reports for The Washington Post.

Despite threats of violence, an alpaca ranch in Colorado aims to be a refuge for LGBTQ+ Americans who long for the rural life they were sometimes obliged to leave. Read more here.

On Thursday the House Appropriations Committee voted to bar companies from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran from buying U.S. farmland. The provision will be included in the annual funding bill for the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration. Read more here.

The federal government paid out a record $41.6 billion in subsidies to farmers in 2020, twice as much as in 2018. Read more here.

Like it or not, climate change must be "front and center" in the crafting of the 2023 Farm Bill, write agricultural economists Harwood Schaffer and Daryll Ray in their latest column. Read more here.

Though the Trump administration launched a major initiative to bring broadband to rural America in 2020, many are still waiting; a Las Vegas-based company repeatedly fumbled after winning the right to deliver broadband in parts of 15 states. The situation serves as a cautionary tale as the federal government rolls out another expensive rural broadband program, The Wall Street Journal reports.

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