Halito (Hello) from Dr. Evan Whitley, Executive Director of Agriculture.
As a part of my daily job duties, I travel quite a bit. Thankfully, most of my excursions are local, or at least within the boundaries of the Choctaw Nation. Most of these trips are to take the opportunity at public events and meetings the many developments and events taking place within the Choctaw Agriculture and Natural Resources program. Occasionally, I’m gifted with the chance to host visitors at one or more of our ranches and “show-off” our agriculture efforts at the ground level.
As you may have already ascertained, I’m quite proud of our agricultural program, and the impressive progress we’ve collectively made over the last few years. For several reasons (these “bragging rights” high among them), I greatly enjoy both types of networking opportunities. It’s a chance to fellowship with other producers and industry representatives, especially those outside my normal “AG-related” kinships.
During these trips, I find myself with plenty time to think and reflect. Most times, my mind goes to approaching operational objectives or pondering additional marketing opportunities, but sometimes, I muse about our “big picture” initiatives – perhaps born of exhaustion from the seemingly endless election commercials (I for one am glad this one’s over!).
The other night, I was coming home late and started pondering the future of the rural community and the unintended consequences of our continual loss of this way of life. Fortunately for Oklahoma, we still have many small towns here, for many other traditionally agricultural states, that sadly is not the case – and it only continues to move more in that direction… I myself having witnessed it on a personal level.
I was raised in a beautiful, sprawling, largely rural setting… only to see it “progress” and be sold by the square foot to Real Estate firms and – along the way – lose the majority of its rural-status along with the many positive corollaries that accompany the lifestyle. My conversation with myself led me to ponder, “What could we do about it?” Sadly, no good answer was offered up. Real estate development is responsible for producing more millionaires than any other industry, so perhaps the continued loss of “Small-Town America” is simply inevitable. If that’s the case, it will come with unintended and unfortunate consequences, not only to agricultural production… but to the very fabric of our society.