By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

REYNOLDSBURG, Ohio — The USDA, Rural Development and the Farm Service Agency (FSA) will host a Community Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth at the Oho Department of Agriculture Jan. 21, from 1-3 p.m.

 This gathering is designed for people from throughout Ohio, specifically in rural areas, to share ideas on what is needed to create jobs in the state. The forum will be “more discussion than speech-making,” said FSA State Executive Director Steve Maurer.
“We’re looking for people throughout Ohio that, first, have ideas and insights they want to share, and, second, when you get people together talking about problems, sometimes solutions arise or ideas arise from the discussion that can help create dollars for farmers and jobs for people,” Maurer said.

Ohio’s Rural Development and FSA loan funds are healthy and the agencies are ready to make loans to people, he said.

“Rural Development has loan and grant funds that have been used to help stimulate jobs in places around the state,” he said. “Last year, Ohio FSA put out $167 million in our loan programs. Those loan volumes are going up as banks, in many cases, withdraw from agricultural loans. So we’re a crucial part of helping farmers stay on the farm.”

The goal of the forum is to create a blueprint for directing a public policy agenda that will foster and support economic growth for Ohio.
“Oftentimes in Ohio, economic development has often been looked at as chasing smokestacks,” Maurer said. “But what we don’t do enough of, perhaps, is finding ways to tie the natural resource base that surrounds all of our cities and our communities to jobs which provide for people.

“As we find better ways to do that, we create the dollars for farmers and jobs for people at the same time. It’s a pretty good economic connection going back to William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold Speech in 1896, when he said, ‘Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.’”

The forum will be held at the Ohio Department of Agriculture office at 8995 E. Main Street in Reynoldsburg.

For more information or to RSVP, contact Michael Jones (Rural Development) at 614-255-2394 or Christina Reed (FSA) at 614-255-2527, or by e-mail, respectively, at Michael.Jones@oh.
usda.gov or Christina.Reed@oh.usda.gov