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The Rural Development Strategic Plan for 1997-2002, which was the predecessor to this document, was developed by Rural Development employees with facilitation services provided by outside contractors. Stakeholders provided significant contributions in the development of the earlier plan through their participation in focus groups and listening forums held at the State and national levels. Rural Development State Directors held 39 listening forums with partners and stakeholders to identify their concerns and obtain their input. A National Listening Forum was held to obtain the comments and concerns of national interest groups. In addition, all mission area employees were surveyed to obtain their thoughts and comments with over 50 percent of them responding.
Since 1997, Rural Development staff has held numerous meetings with stakeholders on a variety of issues and the feedback from those meetings have been considered in the development of this plan. Also added to this plan are the recommendations from the Civil Rights Action Team’s Report, Civil Rights at the United States Department of Agriculture, dated February 1997, and the National Commission on Small Farm’s report, A Time To Act, dated January 1998. Both of these reports are based on extensive feedback from customers and stakeholders and contain recommendations specific to Rural Development. No additional external input was sought in the development of this plan and no outside facilitation was involved.
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