Rural entrepreneurship news roundup

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Todays news was full of stories on rural entrepreneurship. Here’s a roundup.

Towns turn to the arts and revive Main Streets
The Economist magazine (USA)
Some surviving small towns have simply become bedroom communities for large cities, and have lost their character. But others deeper in the boondocks remain determined to beat off the doomsayers with creative ideas.
BPC’s contribution against unemployment
The Swazi Observer (Sawziland)
In the job creation drive, TechnoServe launched the Believe Begin Become Swaziland National Business Plan Competition (BPC) which provided an opportunity for those with grand business ideas to turn them into successful ventures. TechnoServe’s mission was to provide business solutions to rural poverty. As highlighted in the PRSAP, the unemployment rate is more prevalent in rural areas, estimated to be at 34 percent compared to 20 percent in urban areas.
[You just thought your local unemployment was high.]
Online route to the 21st century for small towns
San Antonio Express-News (USA)
The Internet is potentially as important, Clary said, as the creation of the farm-to-market road system in the 1940s. That project brought small-town Texas into the 20th century.
Nebraskans cope with declining population
North Platte Telegraph (USA)
Agri-tourism, which enables visitors to experience agricultural life first hand, combines traditional commodity agriculture – raising row-crops or cattle – with other services, such as taking city slickers on ranch tours. It is also one part of value-added agriculture, which attempts to increase the economic value and consumer appeal of agricultural commodities. Other value-added agriculture examples include new ethanol plants and community-owned businesses, Ridder said.
On your bike for the rural recovery
The Age (Australia)
The road to recovery for drought-stricken rural Victoria could be along a bike path, with research showing the state’s regional rail trails are becoming big money-spinners. Cyclists using rail trails — cycle and walking paths built on disused country rail lines — spend an average of $258 a day, according to a study by La Trobe University professor Sue Beeton.
Tax-cut plan would help only rural firms
Arizona Daily Star (USA)
“We ought to have incentives to bring business to rural Arizona,” said Joe Galli, the organization’s lobbyist.
[But the big metros are afraid!]
And it could mean that companies with manufacturing operations in the metropolitan areas might decide to pack up and move their operations to rural areas, especially if it could save millions of dollars.
[!!!!]
Access To Ethanol Being Affected By Politics – subscription
Yankton Daily Press (USA)
… of the bill is to preserve a condition that supports entrepreneurship and avoids … Sombke added that as the energy industry expands into rural America, many …
2006 a busy farming year
The Carlow Nationalist (Ireland)
[Scroll down to “Rural Development moved on”.]
Some 600 families expressed an interest in diversifying into such areas as organic farming, tourism, forestry and small business development.
Make use of information technology to spur growth – subscription
Daily Nation (Kenya)
National efforts ought to be geared towards the establishment of a universal culture of entrepreneurship that rides on the back of technology.
Almost half of rural properties are being snapped up by ‘hobby-farmers’
Peterborough Evening Telegraph (UK)
In the second quarter of this year, the Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors announced the rise of the “hobby-farmer” fuelling the rural market after figures showed that almost half (49 per cent) of farmland purchases in the eastern region were made by people from non-farming backgrounds.
[That’s the only bit I found interesting in the annual summary of the real estate business.]

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.