Farmshoring
Just when you thought you were savvy with the lingo, when you figured out that “My bad” wasn’t an incomplete sentence—you realized that your son’s comment “sweet!” about the new DS Mini didn’t mean he wanted to eat it—that the phrase, “Oo, snap!” wasn’t about a shirt closure—along comes something new.
Farmshoring.
Huh?
Try this: think of offshoring. You know, a company wants to save money, so they relocate to another country, thus saving the company money, but robbing U.S. citizens of jobs in the meantime. Right, so farmshoring is that company deciding to save money by moving the company to rural America to create job and opportunities for U.S citizens while saving money. What’s there not to love?!
We at Return to Roots have watched the positive economic, moral, and regional impact CGI and Northrop Grumman have had by moving to Lebanon, Virginia, both successful examples of farmshoring.
There are always going to be two sides to any issue, and there are those who will tell you that offshoring is still the cheaper way to go if a company wants to save money on wages. According to a 2003 report by McKinsey Global Institute, a software developer from the U.S. making $60/hour can be matched by a developer in India possessing the same skill $6/hour. BUT! Start up costs, building costs, rent or purchasing of location, infrastructure, is going to cost a lot less by farmshoring according to every article out there. Consider too the advantage of U.S. security issues and language complications avoided by relocating a company within the U.S. rather than out.
One argument I saw said you can get an educated and experienced IT person to move to a rurally located company, or one to return to their roots, but why would they send their kids to a Southwest Virginia school? Let’s first look at the assumption that a rural school system isn’t going to measure up to a city school. We might point out what happens when you break the word “assume” down. Having taught in both inter-city and rural schools, I would say that there is a lot less crime and drugs in your rural school. The student/teacher ratio is better. The surrounding community is more involved in the success of every student, because every student represents the community. Teachers in any school system still have to meet state requirements. The teacher in a smaller, less stressful environment isn’t going to experience the same burn-out one in a metropolitan area will suffer. The point has been made that the companies involved in farmshoring would benefit from being benefactors for the schools, actively investing in the success of the school system and the students from the area. This helps the community, and encourages new employees. Now there is a win-win situation. Both CGI and Northrup Grumman invest in the learning institutions where they live.
Obviously adjustments within the community need to happen, as well as adjustments made on the part of those moving into the community. Patrick Jonsson wrote in the Christian Science Monitor (February 23, 2006), “That Appalachia is on the forefront of farmshoring is a result of massive investing in broadband, which connects wide, rural swaths to the Internet. The Department of Agriculture has handed out more than $800 million in low-interest loans for broadband expansion nationwide, a portion of which went to Virginia. Lebanon and Russell County, Va., received more than $4 million in grants from the Department of Commerce as well as from the state’s tobacco settlement fund. The fiber optic cable through Russell County, Daniel Boone’s old stomping grounds, officially went live last year. “If you don’t build it, they won’t come,” says Jim Andrew administrator for the USDA’s Rural Development Utilities Program. “Somebody out there has to have the vision … because it’s really not an easy thing to do where the people are few and far between.””
Other obstacles to folks’ feelings about the success or not of farmshoring consist of negative perceptions of rural Virginia. But that’s a topic for a whole other blog!