Former Sen. Heitkamp discusses her One Country Project

Rural voters played an important role in the 2016 presidential election and appear poised to do so again in 2020. According to a recent Farm Futures survey, three-quarters of U.S. farmers say they will vote to reelect the President despite ongoing trade disruptions, falling grain prices and rising farm bankruptcies.One former U.S. Senator says farmers were not always a reliable voting bloc for the Republican Party and is trying to better understand the concerns of rural voters in general.After the 2018 election, former U.S. Senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana founded the One Country Project. The project does “social listening” on political issues to learn how those insights can be translated into policy efforts. For example, recent work discovered that rural Americans are deeply concerned about the Post Office, as well as access to health care and veterans’ issues. Senator Heitkamp, a Democrat, sat down with Feedstuffs policy editor Jacqui Fatka to discuss the goals of the project, as well as what the organization has learned about rural Americans’ attitudes regarding COVID-19 heading into the final weeks of the campaign cycle.This episode of Feedstuffs In Focus is sponsored by United Animal Health, a leader in animal health and nutrition. You can learn more about United Animal Health and how they are working to advance animal science worldwide by visiting their website UnitedANH.com.For more information on this and other stories, visit  Feedstuffs  online.Follow Feedstuffs on Twitter @Feedstuffs, or join the conversation via Facebook.