Small Town News

Secretary of Agriculture speaks on possible future employment opportunities in rural America

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Jobs and how people in the Copper Basin region, as well as everywhere else, need them to prosper topped the list of topics at a regional community meeting last Saturday.

Special guest at the event was U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. He was on a fact finding tour to the area at the invitation of U.S. Representative Ann Kirkpatrick focusing on the Copper Basin Jobs Project that aims to create more than 1,000 jobs and help Arizona realize its economic potential.

The meeting, held at St. Mary's Center in Superior, was attended by interested parties, public officials and representatives from all over the Copper Basin area.

Vilsack and Kirkpatrick had spent the early morning hours touring the Resolution Copper mine site and meeting with representatives from the Copper Communities Alliance economic development group. Following introductions and comments at the community meeting from Kirkpatrick, Alliance representatives and other guests, Vilsack was introduced. Like everyone in the room, he had jobs and the future on his mind.

"There is no question that this country works best when it believes that tomorrow is going to be better than today," he said at one point in his remarks. He believes that people feel a sense of skepticism these days; they feel they don't want to hang on. "Folks, we can't let that happen," he said.

Job opportunities need to be created, he said. Energy jobs are an important area to focus on and we have to get it right. We have to be innovative. He said that America has always been an innovative country but now other parts of the world are moving ahead of us and we can't let that happen. "We cannot allow other countries to be more innovative than we are," he said.

He explained that a large share of energy career opportunities are to be found in rural communities as rural areas are where energy projects by necessity need to be done. Now, we can say to the youngsters in school in rural areas that this is why they have to stay in school. We can say to the farmers, here's the money you need.

He said he saw real opportunity in rural Arizona. "It's an exciting future," he said, "but you have to invest in it."

He said he had been privileged to be in the front row recently when President Barack Obama had given the State of the Union address. "What the president expressed was a concern about the country and a recognition that times are tough and that people are looking for a pathway," Vilsack said. "They are looking for an opportunity for a brighter and better future and I think the president recognized and appreciated that it all starts with jobs."

It is, Vilsack said, "appropriate and relevant" for the U.S. to figure out ways to create job opportunities for people looking for work, people who are underemployed and people who have lost hope about getting work ever. He said the President has also suggested that it is important to figure out ways to make the opportunities we create more sustainable.

"I want to express to all of you that these are concerns that I think you already know," Vilsack said. He added that he was expressing the concerns just so everyone would know that he knew: Arizona has not only been struck hard in this latest recession but struck over a long period of time.

In his remarks, he touched on the migration of younger rural residents to urban areas, resulting in the aging of rural America. This is especially true among the country's farmers and ranchers, he said.

Worsening this problem, he said, is that jobs in rural areas are often not the kind that can support families so poverty and unemployment rates are higher. "So the question is what do we do about that," he said, because we can't continue to have this out-migration of our brightest and best." He shared figures that showed a disproportionate percentage of the residents of rural areas serve in the U.S. military compared with the rest of the country.

He linked that to the value system of rural American and its sense of community. "It's about community," he said. "It's about faith, it's about family, it's about understanding you've got responsibility to others. It's about all of that. You get raised right and you understand about hard work."

Providing job help was on the mind of Resolution Copper President and CEO David Salisbury also. During brief remarks he made at the meeting, he referred to a permit his company is waiting for that could create some jobs. He said he had a hundred people out there right now ready to go to work. "We're standing ready to invest the money to put those people to work," he said, noting how much the company has spent so far on the mine project and how much it has ready to spend in the future. "But we need the authorization to move forward; so it's about jobs, it's about giving this area the economic viability it needs." The Resolution Copper mining project and the jobs it will create and the related land exchange legislation introduced into the U.S. Congress by Rep. Kirkpatrick hovered at the base of the jobs discussion. Vilsack did not express an opinion for or against the land exchange. He commented generally on the complexity of issues when lands of sensitive cultural significance are involved. He said he understood there are people here who are genuinely concerned with the environment and the environmental impact process as well as "unique environmental opportunities this area avails." The Four Forest Restoration Initiative is also a focal point of the Secretary and Congresswoman's trip to Arizona. The initiative is a proposal to change the way national forests are managed and protect communities in the state from wildfires, benefit the environment and revitalize the state's forestry industry. (Visit www.copper area, com for videos of Vilsack and other speakers at this event)



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