CRRF’n the Archives

Agriculture can only be understood in its full economic, social, and environmental context. In 1994, this was a radical perspective. It was our message when members of the ARRG network were invited to make a presentation to a joint committee of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.

Seven ARRG members elaborated the implications of this perspective for rural women, the quality of rural life, community networks, local initiatives, and the operation of complex systems. Check out the record of these presentation via http://billreimer.ca/research/files/TowardsAWholeRuralPolicyForCanadaARRGWorkingPapersSeriesNumber7-1994.pdf. Did we get it right? Have things changed? What is your vision today?

“*We cannot expect a major revitalization of rural Canada, but absolute population growth is likely to be positive, particularly in non-farm regions and those close to large urban centres…

We cannot expect urban standards of service delivery, but with appropriate monitoring and exploration we should be able to make more efficient use of the means at our disposal…

The identification of general benefits and resources provided by rural areas would serve as a basis for justifying the transfer of funds from urban to rural areas as well as the limitation of costs that exported to the rural areas.” (Towards a Whole Rural Policy for Canada, 1994, p41)

This is a series of 41 flyers in English and 26 in French that identify some of the key insights from the New Rural Economy Project of CRRF. Download and copy them for events or places where you think they may be useful. They made a great series for posting on office doors or at conferences in the pre-COVID days. Perhaps you can think of ways they may be used in our current, more online, world. If you do, let us know so that we can pass on your suggestions to others. https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/sociology-anthropology/research/nre/research-findings.html#flyers

We made three decisions regarding our annual conferences that have served us well over the years. The first was to meet in rural areas wherever possible (more than 1 hour from an international airport); the second was to give program control to the local community; and the third was to integrate local tours by which participants learned about community challenges and initiatives.

As part of the 11-year New Rural Economy Project, David Bruce and his cohorts produced a series of 8 videos regarding the ways in which rural communities are turning the challenges they face into new opportunities. In the process, the videos identify the general lessons emerging from these examples so that other communities might be inspired in similar ways. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD2150009BF83CF5 “

In 1988, Ray Bollman (Statistics Canada), Fran Shaver (Concordia U.), and I (Tony Fuller) attended the International Rural Sociological Society conference in Bologna where Harriet Friedmann in her presentation first hinted at global restructuring. Ray and I felt that Canadian scholars were probably not very well equipped to debate such ideas and to measure their potential impacts in Canada’s diverse rural regions. Ray’s response was to increasingly make available data on rural social and economic issues, while mine was to press for a think tank that would attract top scholars such as Peter Apedaile, Phil Ehrensaft, Hartly Furtan, Bruno Jean, Bill Reimer, Fran Shaver, and Jack Stabler. Together, we persuaded Ag. Canada to sponsor the first group meeting in Regina to the tune of $2,000… The conference marked for the first time officially that rural was not necessarily agricultural. This was not popular in Saskatoon, especially among the farm women’s group!” [Tony Fuller, 2020/06/08: What I Remember.docx and email 2020/10/21

Our present activities and insights rest on a 32-year history of research, discussion, collaboration, and projects among researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, and community people. Over those 3 decades we have learned a great deal about rural places, people, and communities. They serve as a solid foundation for our current activities and hopefully a source of pride and inspiration for the present cohort of participants. Check out the following video that outlines the first 30 years of that history. You may be surprised how many of the insights are reflected in our current discussions and initiatives.

http://www.billreimer.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Reimer30YearsOfCRRF02.pdf

“I would like to add another item to the discussion of evolution of CRRF. Lynden Johnson was the head of the federal Rural Secretariat and collaborated on some projects with the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC, now known as Colleges and Institutes Canada). He was quite insistent that CRRF should include college-based researchers in its network. As a result, I was the first college-based researcher to address a CRRF conference (Tweed, I think it was 2004) and I believe there has been college representation at CRRF conferences ever since. Unlike other research networks I have been part of over the years, CRRF people have been very welcoming of the applied research perspective of colleges.” [Nelson Rogers, 2020/10/16-email]