Strenthen Rural America Petition - Update II

Strengthen Rural America – Rural Action Network Petition

The Center for Rural Affairs has launched a drive to gather 10,000 signatures in support of historic reforms in farm and rural economic and development policies through the next farm bill. We hope that the petition will grow even bigger as the farm debate advances, but we want to start the debate with a loud and united voice calling for an unprecedented commitment to and investment in entrepreneurial development, community development and farm policies that focus on creating and sustaining the next generation of farmers and ranchers.

We began this effort quietly. We hope that this will begin as a different kind of petition than most, primarily because we want you, our supporters to help us build it. We began by asking as few of our supporters and close friends to sign the petition and send an e-mail to their friends asking them to sign it as well and send it on. The effort is growing, albeit slowly at first, because this kind of word of mouth effort takes a little time.

But the petition is catching on. We still have fewer than 1,000 signatures, but most encouraging is that more than a third have come from people that we did not know before this effort began. And that is at the heart of this effort. If each of us shared our hope and our dreams for the future of rural America with ten or twenty or fifty friends and families, we could build a network and rural Americans and urban allies that could break the stranglehold that some of the most powerful economic and political special interests hold over farm and rural policy and use the 2007 farm bill to begin creating rural policy that raises up family farms and ranches as well as rural communities, instead of undermining them as do so many current policies.

So, the question remains, have you signed the petition? Have you asked your friends and family and colleagues and everyone you can think of to sign the petition? You can sign the Strengthen Rural America Petition at – www.cfra.org/nran_endorse.htm

Then, take another step and ask everyone you can to sign the petition! You can forward this blog address or send an e-mail from the Center's Strengthen Rural America webpage - www.cfra.org/nran_endorse.htm

The Center for Rural Affairs National Rural Action Network will deliver the petition signatures to your Senators and Representatives. We will also alert all who sign on when contacting their elected officials or taking other action will make a crucial difference on a rural issue before Congress.

With your help, the National Rural Action Network will grow to tens of thousands of people speaking out for Rural America, perhaps even more. Together we will build the power necessary for rural Americans take control of our destiny.

If you prefer to ask your friends to sign the petition in person, you can download a paper petition from the Center for Rural Affairs website. Or contact John Crabtree, johnc@cfra.org, 402-687-2103 ext 1010 to have paper petitions mailed to you.

Tell everyone you know…Sign the Petition! – www.cfra.org/nran_endorse.htm

post a question or comment here or contact John Crabtree, johnc@cfra.org

Center for Rural Affairs
Values. Worth. Action.