The White House Rural Council has launched a $10 billion rural economic development fund. This launch was announced last Thursday at the Rural Opportunity Investment Conference held in Washington D.C. CoBank, a Denver-based national cooperative bank, serves as the anchor investor of the fund that will be managed by Capitol Peak Asset Management. Capitol will also recruit additional institutional investors to the fund including pension funds, endowments, and foundations that are interested in investing in rural areas.

Minnesota’s economic future may well be rooted in its historic leadership in agricultural production, according to a new report prepared by Battelle, Agbioscience as a Development Driver: Minnesota Agbioscience Strategy.

Across the globe, the proliferation of innovation-led economic development is typically viewed in an urban context. Despite cities receiving the bulk of the attention, researchers have begun to focus on how to leverage best practices in rural economic development. Just as is the case in nearly all economic development scenarios, practitioners and policymakers working in rural areas benefit from a better understanding of local strengths and opportunities, according to new research from the United States, Canada, and the European Union.

Last week, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) held a special meeting that include approximately 100 investors and venture capitalists to help stimulate private sector investments in rural infrastructure projects with the potential to spur economic development in small towns and rural communities across the country. Through its U.S.

Tennessee leaders hope to raise $10 million in public and private funding over the next five years to support an effort to attract 200 agricultural technology entrepreneurs and establish 100 ag-tech businesses by 2020. USDA Rural Development and the Tennessee Department of Agricultural recently announced they would seed that effort by contributing $220,000 to AgLaunch, a program to aid early-stage ag-tech companies. Memphis Bioworks Foundation will lead the initiatives, providing mentoring and programming opportunities for entrepreneurs. The program will begin in 2016.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam recently announced a new fund to support economic development in rural parts of the state. While most of the $8 million (approximately $7 million) is designated for shovel-ready economic development sites and tourism projects, the state will commit $600,000 for economic development grants to support entrepreneurship in small towns across the state including $300,000 to support a Main Street Business Incubator Program for downtown business districts.

In partnership with the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), the Economic Development Administration (EDA) announced the availability of $65.8 million in new funding through the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) initiative.

Two private venture firms have committed to raising a total of $125 million to invest in rural, early stage startups under the Department of Agriculture's Rural Business Investment Program. The program was launched last April, when Advantage Capital Partners launched the first $150 million Rural Business Investment Company (RBIC) fund.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the launch of the McLarty Capital Partners’ Rural Business Investment Company (RBIC) – a new private investment fund with the potential to inject $100 million into growth-oriented, small businesses across rural America. As the fifth RBIC to launch since 2014, McLarty Capital Partners’ RBIC is part of the Made in Rural America initiative, an ongoing effort by the Obama administration to attract private sector capital to investment opportunities in rural America and drive more economic growth in rural communities.

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) announced $26 million in awards to expand and diversify the economy in coal-impacted communities in five states. This adds to the $47 million ARC has invested since 2015 through the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) Initiative. The 31 awards that were announced in late January are projected to create or retain more than 2,500 jobs and leverage an additional $32 million from public and private investors.

As part of an effort to support rural, small businesses in cutting-edge fields such as bio-manufacturing and advanced energy production, the USDA announced a new capital access initiative to facilitate private investment. The $150 million investment fund is being formed under USDA’s Rural Business Investment Program and will be managed by Advantage Capital Partners. Read the announcement.

A $150 million fund, formed under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Business Investment Program (RBIP), will provide equity capital to small businesses in rural parts of the country. The fund will be managed by Advantage Capital Partners, which, along with eight other farm credit institutions, has pledged the backing capital for the effort. USDA has announced that it will accept applications for other new Rural Business Investment Companies to raise funds from farm credit institutions in order to make equity investments. Applications are due July 29.

While U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has announced that the Rural Development agency would be elevated under a reorganization plan because it would be placed under the direct oversight of the Secretary, not everyone is viewing the consolidation as an elevation.

In a recent Digest article, SSTI covered research highlighting the oversized role that offshoring multinationals had in manufacturing employment decline from 1983 to 2011. During this time, deindustrialization and manufacturing unemployment had a profound impact on community approaches to economic development.

Two recent reports provide good news and bad news regarding innovation in America’s rural areas. Only one in six individuals living in rural areas was self-employed in 2016 — down from one in four in 1988, according to a new issue brief from the Small Business Administration (SBA). This represents a decline of nearly 20 percent over that span of time.

The Appalachian Regional Commission has released a request for proposals for the 2018 POWER (Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization) Program.

When it comes to paying off student loan debt, rural individuals who move to metro areas fare better than those who stay, according to new research from PJ Tabit and Josh Winters of the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Consumer and Community Affairs. Using panel data from Equifax and the New York Fed, the authors explore the relationship between the student loan balances of rural millennials and where they choose to live when they begin repayment. Their analysis offers a deeper understanding of the rural brain drain phenomenon and approaches to addressing the challenge.

The latest Farm Bill, expected to be signed into law Thursday, contains provisions that could provide significant new tools for rural innovations. The two greatest opportunities are the Rural Innovation Stronger Economy (RISE) grant program, which creates an innovation cluster and strategy program for rural regions, and a change to allow the existing Community Facilities program to support incubators, makerspaces, and job training centers.

Rural communities across the country have the opportunity to build capacity to create innovation-based jobs with a new initiative spearheaded by the Center on Rural Innovation. Communities that are already working on building new entrepreneurship capacity will receive on-site technical assistance as they execute an innovation hub strategy. Those communities will need to secure live-work space for the hub, raise up to $500,000 in operating funding and apply for matching funds at the end of Q1 2019.

Despite an uneven economic recovery, fewer Americans are living in distressed communities and more are living in prosperous ones, according to a recent report from the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a Washington, D.C.-based policy and advocacy organization.

Vibrant Virginia (VV), a new program from Virginia Tech’s Office of Economic Development, is offering seed grants as a way to encourage faculty and graduate students to explore persistent public policy challenges spanning the state’s urban, suburban, and rural communities.