TIFTON – Rural communities and agriculture depend on each other,
said Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes here at the Symposium on Value-added
Agriculture Dec. 14.

For either to survive, he said, Georgia’s government and
agriculture must pursue new ideas in educating workers, investing
and development. And it’s critical that both survive.

“If we don’t have vibrant rural communities, it will create a
political and economic division (in) the state,” Barnes said.

“And if the state ever becomes substantially divided,” he said,
“it will not be prosperous.”

Unless something is done soon, agriculture doesn’t have a bright
long-term future in Georgia and probably in the nation, he said.
“Agriculture is the base of our rural communities.”

For rural communities to be a vibrant part of the state’s
economic fabric, he said, agriculture has to be a part.

The economic forces of consolidation and competition are putting
pressure on agriculture and the rural communities it supports.
“The questions is: how do we deal with them?” Barnes said.

The bottom line, he said, is that consumers will go with the
lowest prices. And as this relates to agriculture, “We have to
change the focus of where we are,” he said. “There’s going to be
increasing global competition and increased pressure on
consolidations. …

“We have to look at methods, recognizing the consolidation and
competition that are going to be with us, to gain a better margin
in the (farm) products,” he said.

Higher Education

Rural workers will also have to be better educated, he said.
Increasingly high-tech rural jobs require a better-trained work
force.

Less than a generation ago, 65 percent of all jobs in Georgia
required only the skills of a high school graduate. This year, 65
percent of the state’s new jobs will require at least two years
of postsecondary education.

“Out of every 10 children who started school this fall, if the
trends remain the same, only six will be there when high school
graduation comes,” Barnes said.

Of those six, only three will go on to some type of postsecondary
education. And of those three, only one will complete that
postsecondary education.

“Vibrant rural communities require margins in agribusiness that
support industry,” he said. “But to get those margins, you have
to have higher-skilled processing and higher-skilled jobs that
require a higher-educated and better-trained worker. If the pool
of trained workers is not large enough, the community is going to
die.”

Sufficient Support?

Georgia’s government is willing to keep funding rural economic
development, agricultural research and private-public
partnerships to add value to farm products, Barnes said, “if we
see that the agricultural community is serious about making some
wholesale, broad changes in the way we produce.”

R.K. Sehgal, commissioner of the Georgia Dept. of Industry, Trade
and Tourism, said Georgia must:

* Steer toward product-oriented agriculture.

* Establish a large private-public research alliance.

* Persuade farmers to become more interdependent and less
independent.

“And we need to start using the world ‘value-added,’” he said,
referring to going beyond traditional roles of simply growing
crops and selling them.

Randy Hudson, director of the University of Georgia emerging
crops and technologies program, said developing a value-added
approach won’t be easy.

“To attack this issue will require mobilizing agricultural
leaders, lending institutions and our state and federal
governments to a charge,” Hudson said. “It will require a
dedication to succeed with the understanding that failure is not
an option.”