Let's End the Systemic Neglect of Rural Areas

By Cole Wakefield

Originally Published on LinkedIn

I have spent the last couple of years writing about issues facing rural America regarding animal welfare. As I started my exploration, I expected that many problems facing rural America were primarily cultural. Even though I grew up in rural Arkansas, I was ready to accept the consensus that the plight of animals in rural areas has more to do with a difference in the emotional place that companion animals hold in the family hierarchy than city animals. There are broad assumptions that in rural areas, companion animals are more likely to have "working" positions in the family and are, therefore, somehow less emotionally valuable. While that may seem somewhat logical, what is essentially saying is that rural people are not as "emotionally developed" as our urban counterparts regarding our companion animals. Not only is that wrong, but it is also pretty insulting. Of course, you may have difficulty finding that stated explicitly nowadays, but it has undoubtedly been implied in many conversations I've had with leaders in our industry.

I don't blame anybody for having that mindset; there is a severe lack of data and understanding of what's happening in rural areas. Most of our industry leadership has little to no experience directly working in rural areas, and the utilitarian argument makes sense, so I understand why it has been widely adopted. However, it is time for the industry to admit that the struggles in rural America have more to do with systemic neglect than anything else. Sure, the agricultural and "working animal" ethos in rural America does have an impact, but it is just one minor factor affecting rural areas.

Last year I published an article where I crunched publicly available data to compare animal welfare grant-making between rural and non-rural areas. There are some caveats to the data, but in general, I found that while rural America represents 10% of the population, it only receives 2% of the grant funds awarded to animal welfare agencies. That is objectively horrible. I received feedback from grant-making agencies who felt the characterization was unfair because they often struggle to recruit applicant agencies for grants in rural areas. The industry wants to do right, and I have seen improvement with including rural voices and organizations seeking to provide more rural support, but the support required is much more than a few grants will cover.

The pets and people of rural America are suffering, and the way the economy is trending, that suffering will only increase. Much of rural America has no animal welfare infrastructure, and the existing infrastructure is increasingly fragile. Animal welfare grantmakers and support organizations must stop treating rural America like its better-developed urban and suburban siblings. Equity demands a more significant investment in rural America and must be done at the ground level. All national grantmakers and support organizations need program specialists with substantial, direct rural experience on their staff. Instead of "if you build it, they will come" grant application portals, our industry needs to directly recruit grant recipients from rural areas. We need to get people in the field educating local organizations where they exist and seeding new ones where there are none. Many current effectiveness metrics are heavily influenced by dollars-per-life-saved and cannot guide our spending in rural America. This generally short-sighted metric does not account for the systemic and prolonged suffering of people and animals in rural areas with little to no service.

Today, I (an admitted nobody from the country) am asking for a commitment from our national leaders to shift spending and investment over the next five years so that rural America receives support in proportion to its population. That is simply 10% of animal welfare grant spending. Equity principles suggest that I ask for more to account for the prolonged neglect, but 10% is fair, reasonable, and achievable. So, how about it? Is anyone willing to commit to providing rural America with the funding it needs and deserves and to do the hard work required to make it possible?

P.S. I do understand that some great programs are happening in rural areas, and there is support flowing; however, current levels of support are generally inadequate.