By Zippy Duvall
American Farm Bureau
Living in rural America is a blessing. Many of us can sit on our porches and look out over beautiful fields, forests, hills and prairies. We live in beautiful and historic small towns where we support local businesses. And connecting us all are the roads and bridges we travel as we start busy days tending to livestock, nurturing our crops, attending our children’s or grandchildren’s sporting events and visiting friends and family. Trucks and trains filled with the fruits of farmers’ and ranchers’ hard work crisscross the landscape as barges move up and down rivers.
But the networks we rely on for all of this are in a severe state of disrepair.
Each year, the American Society of Civil Engineer’s (ASCE) gives a grade to America’s infrastructure, and this year, we got a C-. If my kids came home from school with a C-, we would have had an earnest conversation about how we could work together and put a plan in place to do better. As Americans, we need to develop a plan to fix the dismal state of our nation’s infrastructure and make sure rural America isn’t left in the dust.