Innovative programs aim to help small-town kids learn they can consider coming home

The rural Illinois town of Effingham, which might legitimately claim the title of mecca of rural economic development, and the farming-rich region of Skagit County in Washington State are nurturing programs that may help small towns send their best and brightest off for a time with the message that Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again.

In fact, a program called Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities (CEO) a business person-student mentorship match that was born in Effingham as the creation of retired teacher Craig Lindvahl, is aimed at guiding students to the conviction that they want to go home after college, the military or see-the-world urge.

"When you successfully engage your business community, encouraging them to share their expertise with your next generation of business owners, connecting them with young people who want to know what your business people know, incredible things happen," says Lindvahl.

"You'll create a community that will make your students want to come back and start businesses, work, and raise families," adds Lindvahl, with the rhetorical question: "what's the most effective and cost efficient way to approach long-term economic development?   Grow your own!"

The reach of the CEO message is enhanced by the fact that Lindvahl's partner in an effort that is attracting the interest of a broad range of communities is Jack Schultz, widely recognized by development leaders in smaller communities around the country as the guru of rural economic development.

Lindvahl and Schultz, whose book Boomtown USA charted the rules for how small towns can become success stories, have been asked to make presentations about CEO over the past six weeks in communities from Montana to Georgia.

Meanwhile, in Washington State's Skagit County, which boasts land that is rated in the top 2 percent in the world for agricultural use, the Viva Farms Incubator Program is proving that young people from rural areas can be lured not just back home, but back to the farm.

The four-year-old Viva Farms project, aimed at preserving the region's exceptional farmland in the face of intense development pressure, is one of numerous programs that have sprouted to help train and provide financial assistance to a new wave of farmers.

While Viva Farms and similar programs that havw sprouted in

other regions are primarily attracting immigrants and young people with non-farming backgrounds, there is a growing interest for children of old farmers who are returning to the family farm with fresh ideas.

Spurred by the designation from the American Farmland Trust for Skagit County as the fifth most threatened agricultural region in the nation, creators of the incubator program set out to provide new farmers affordable access to education that includes land and infrastructure, training and technical assistance, start-up loans and distribution support.

Whether next-generation farmers, immigrants or non-farm young people, those involved in the incubator farm program being carried out on 33 acres leased from the Port of Skagit are pursuing farm careers as a means to embody their social, cultural, environmental and economic values, according to creators of the program.

With the incubator in its first development phase, including completion of the first bilingual courses on sustainable farming and "agricultural entrepreneurship," there are already thoughtsabout expanding the reach of the program.

Ethan Schaffer, executive director of Viva Farms and founder of the now-international Growfood.org, whose mission is to train a new generation of sustainable farmers and to reconnect people with farms, says other communities have reached out to get an assist to launch Viva Farm-like programs in regions across Washington State and beyond.

Schaffer notes that the back-to-the-farm segment of the "student" farmers "have different values, goals and motivation in their desire to return to farming."