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NGPRDC - Value Added Agriculture
2007-11-04
The Northern Great Plains Rural Development Commission was established by the United States Congress in August 1994 to prepare a 10-year rural development strategy for the Northern Great Plains region of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Early in its work, the Commission decided to focus on nine priority areas and formed work groups to address seven of them: business development, civic capacity, transportation infrastructure, international trade, value-added agriculture, telecommunications, and health care. The work groups, which consisted of Commissioners and business and policy leaders, were asked to identify key issues within their priority areas and recommend actions that the five states could take together to address those issues.
Each work group was given a set of parameters to guide its work. The parameters included both guidelines that were common to all work groups and items specific to each individual work group. The parameters the Commission asked every work group to consider focused on the regional nature of the Commission's charge and were presented in the form of questions.
- Do the activities require regional cooperation in order for the issue to be addressed?
- Are the issues such that regional cooperation on the activities makes sense?
- Are the activities addressing a shared concern and can a case be made that there is a gain by working together?
- Does the regional problem or issue require a regional solution or is it one that can best be handled locally?
- Does the proposed cooperative action provide opportunities for local people to do things they could not otherwise do?
The work groups began meeting in December 1995 and by April, had narrowed their recommendations to specific actions that could likely be implemented following completion of the Commission's report. All of the groups submitted their reports to the Commission in July.
This is the Value-Added Agriculture Work Group's final report. It will be submitted along with the Commission's final report to the United States President; United States Secretary of Agriculture; President pro tempore of the United States Senate; the United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; the United States House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture; and the Governor and legislature of each Northern Great Plains state.
