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d ' J Strategies to Revitalize Rural America Strategy #2 Small Entrepreneurship The most effective and desirable economic development strategy for many agricultural communities is small entrepreneurship — development based on locally owned and owner- operated small businesses. Often called micro enterprise development, it has been proven to work in the agricultural areas that have not been successful in attracting manufacturers or other large employers from outside. In Nebraska's farm and ranch counties, over 70 percent of the net job growth is coming from non -farm self - employment, people cre- ating their own jobs. It works because the people in these areas have an entrepreneurial bent. Farm and ranch counties in the na- tion's mid - section have long had two to three times the rate of self - employment as metropolitan counties. It has worked in Nebraska in part because of deliberate efforts to cultivate small business development. Small entrepreneurship is especially important today, as opportunities shrink to attract large employers to remote rural areas. Companies that formerly looked to rural communities for lower wage labor are now mov- ing offshore for even lower wage labor. There are also social advantages to development strategies based on small entrepreneurship. It keeps profits in the community. It creates a mix of opportunities. Small business development creates some low wage jobs, but it also provides significant numbers of opportunities for people to build assets and earn middle class in- comes as business owners. In an era when real wages are falling in many industries, creating a chance for people who work to be business owners creates more equality and opportunity. Finally, nurturing locally owned businesses puts the economic future of the community in the hands of its own members — people committed to its future. That builds local leadership and reduces dependency on out- side forces. The importance of local ownership was recently illustrated for me by a community developer from a rural Appalachian mining community. She said the people of her home community grew dependent on the mining corporations for income and employment. Over time, they lost faith in their capacity to take charge of their own future. So she was working on small business development to break dependency on outside corporations and rebuild the capacity of the community to control its own future. We are not starting from scratch in family farm and ranch communities. We have the good fortune to have inherited communities with strong traditions of self - employment and small scale entrepreneurship. We should never lose sight of the value of that. We should nurture it and build on it. Strategies to Nurture Small Entrepreneurship Most small enterprise development strategies have been based on public /private partnerships — typically non- profit organizations working with rural communities and rural people often with partial government funding. The Center's Rural Enterprise Assistance Program (REAP), which works in rural Nebraska, provides a Page 4