Rural America faces inevitable death

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- My hometown is sitting on death row. The executioner, however, doesn't have to worry. Dighton, Kan., is dying on its own.

A couple miles down the road from my family's farm in Lane County stands a few abandoned buildings.

One is a small barn with the original sod-brick walls caving in. Nearby is a one-room schoolhouse with all the windows broken out. Now it's a public housing project for barn swallows and mice.

There's also a grade school a couple miles from my house in the small town of Amy, Kan., population four, which closed before I was old enough to attend.

Now, the most recent word from home is that Lincoln Primary, which offers kindergarten through third grade, is closing in Dighton, population 1,297 Ð and shrinking.

There's no denying it. My hometown is dying in its sleep. What is even worse is knowing there is no waking up.

The fact that a small rural community is disappearing is nothing new. There used to be other towns in Lane County that have been replaced with wheat fields, like Cold Hill and Cheyenne. Nonetheless, it's a hard fact to swallow.

Dighton's population has been on a steady downward spiral, while towns like Kansas City and Wichita are busting at the seams.

According the U.S. Census Bureau, Lane County's population fell 9.3 percent from 1990 to 2000, while Johnson County's population shot through the roof at 27.1 percent. It's obvious where the people are going.

There are many small farming communities around Kansas just like Dighton that are finding no more rungs on the ladder. The opportunities for growth are slim.

I've heard how angry or upset people are. They want to blame it on someone like politicians, corporate agri-businesses or large farmers. They say they force small farmers off their land.

The fact is that no one can be blamed. There is no conspiracy to stomp out farmers and small towns.

Fewer people are needed in farming today because better technology has replaced much of manual labor.

It's an on-going process that has been happening generation after generation. What my great-great-grandfather could do with his whole family and a team of mules, my great-grandfather could do with one tractor.

Does it hurt to know that my hometown is nearing its demise? Of course it does, but there is no reversing it.

Lane County's main industry will always be agriculture, or anything related to it. There are no massive manufacturing or textile businesses there. There is no mining industry, military base, university or logging industry.

There are, however, really big wheat fields and pastures for grazing cattle. There is no sense in hoping that someone like Boeing, Ford or Microsoft will come settle in with 10,000 new job openings because our infrastructure is built for agriculture.

Other towns have crafted a future for themselves using their agricultural backbone as a reason to grow. Stanton County is booming with the dairy farms that moved from California.

Why don't they come to Lane County? Because Stanton has more water than Lane does. Lane also has the highest property taxes in the state. There are fewer people every year supporting the local county services with taxes.

Starting a new business would be financial suicide for any investor. We have taxed ourselves out of development. The solution to the town's survival existed 20 or 30 years ago, but now it's almost too late.

We should be concerned with making things better for those who will stay in rural communities in the future.

Lifting some of the burden means consolidation, which many towns in the northwest are already doing with schools and mail routes.

Despite whatever reasons exist for the shrinking of my hometown, the passing of cultures and civilizations is a cycle that has been happening for a long time in Lane County -- over a few millennia. It is evident even on my family's farm.

Take a stroll through the south pasture of my house and you'll find yourself standing on a hill that used to be an old Indian campsite.

The spear points, arrowheads and grinding stones buried underneath the grass are testimony to the fact that people used to make a living there.

The sun will eventually set for my hometown, too. This sunset, however, is going to be pretty hard to watch.

Can thank the Democrat Party, which has a policy of collectivizing farms; and is now affecting that under the guise of land purchases and acquisitions made in the names of "resource planning" and "bio-diversity."

It's a wonder that anybody in rural America has voted for the Democrat Party over the last 25 years.

The Democrat Party is against private, family farm ownership.

The Democrat Party has been focusing on the fact that rural American town dwellers who have not had tracts of land in use, are very much desiring employment in work other than at the local MacDonald's restaurant. This attention follows closely upon the heels of various industries, which have capitalized on such labor pools and have built factories "in the heartland." (When driving cross country on the back roads, so to speak, now and then you can come across some small town which has a rather substantial division of a major corporation "in its back yard.)

Well, the Democrat Party is taking advantage of that success and consequent growth of non-farmers "in the heartland," to propose employment as farming "technicians" who would work the farmland which the government(s) has sub-contracted for that purpose, after the government has acquired the land, again, acquired under the names of "resource planning" and "bio-diversity."

This plan of the Democrat Party in partnership with quite a chunk of "corporate America," is one reason for the C.A.R.A. legislation (and other such legislation) to build a general land-fund by which private farmland can be bought up.

The deal is that the "corporate" investors "get dibs on" farming --- that is, they will for the most part win the bids and farm the land.

Yes, the government and environmentalists make noise about how the land will be acquired for "preservation," but the plan allows for development, contrary to what is marketed to the public eye.

That development is both the farming of the land --- this time in corporate - and - government control, in addition to "research."

That word "research" gets thrown around in meetings and in "their" literature, faster than anything else; nobody really stopping to explain by what they mean by "research;" instead, just the liberal - nodding - of - heads about how great is "research," and we're doing it all for the good of the people through "research;" call it "research stew."

Cause that's the simplest description from here.

Well, one of the best kept secrets from most of "the heartland," is this union of corporate giving to the Democrat Party, corporate giving to universities, government "giving" to universities, universities "managing" the land and doing "research" "UNDER" some department(s) of the federal and state governments, and such land - and - social - engineering thence giving to the investors (and contributors), land upon which to farm and otherwise develop.

That is roughly "what is going on," in the planning and implementation stages extant.

If only the rural American farm families of Iowa, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, etc. would care to wake up and notice ... and then stop wasting their votes on the Democrat Party.

Adding to reply 4, above ---

The investors, that is, the winning bidders for utilization of the land ... they get to use the land and make a profit at it WITHOUT PAYING TAXES ON THE LAND.

Frankly, Wall Street is thrilled at the prospect.

Investment bankers are thrilled.

They have been searching around for enterprise in which to invest, and they have found, in planning, the land upon which to develop BUT NOT PAY TAXES.

Farmers in South Dakota vote for Tom Daschle. They pay taxes on their land.

He plans to acquire their kindred (other peoples' like) land (because he does not want to lose HIS constituency), unbeknownst to them, and sub-contract the use of the land, to investors.

The environmentalist mindset thinks it has won a victory by turning over the land to THEIR purposes of, for example, restoring the sniper nat to its rightful kingdom, and because of THAT, they are happy enough to not trouble themselves too much with the land which is sub-contracted for development.

But the message here, is that nobody is paying any taxes on that land anymore, because the government / state owns it. Furthermore, the contract winners are NOT paying any taxes on the land, because they do not own it.

Now, they're going to give a percentage of their profits to the gov't / university management in situs, but the investors will be happy --- OR THERE'S NO DEAL.

Well, not a problem for the Democrats, because to their way of thinking, they are getting enough of what they want as well as being further along to recognized collectivization of private property; "fools that the corporate investors are, we'll use them and their greed to help pay and pave the way!"

Astute.

It's working.

The corporate investors are too short-sighted to concern themselves with THEIR SHRINKING INVESTOR POPULATION "facing inevitable death." Nope, for now, "let's just focus upon what money can be made in the short term, not to mention how our syndicalism with the socialists helps induce their serving notice to the unions to 'back off!'"

I left that part out; where the unions' membership who have also marched in lockstep with the Democrat Party, are also getting screwed.

The future of farming

In the Great American Desert

Dec 13th 2001 | MINNEAPOLIS
From The Economist print edition

The Senate debated a $171 billion farm bill this week. But are some rural parts of the country past help? Consider the view from the Great Plains

IN CAYUGA, North Dakota, Mark Saunders recently gave a party for a friend who used to be a farmer. Most of those who came were also ex-farmers, still living nearby only because they have found jobs at a local factory. The lands around Cayuga were once dotted with working farms. These kept the town going; but now Cayuga's main street is derelict, and the church holds services less than once a month. Ed Langeliers, the pastor, fears that, if the small towns go, no one will teach children moral values and the merits of hard work. He also worries that, as small farmers leave the land, larger corporate entities will take over.

His fears are echoed across a region that is reckoned to be dying. In 1930, there were roughly 575,000 farms on the Great Plains, an area that runs roughly from northern Texas to southern Canada, and from eastern Montana eastwards to Illinois (see map). The number dropped steadily over the years until in 1997, according to Myron Gutmann, a professor of history at the University of Michigan, there were only 231,000. But the number of farms bigger than 1,000 acres has increased from 45,000 in 1930 to more than 77,000 in 1997. Between 1930 and 1990, the rural population dropped from more than 4m to around 2.6m. The rural Great Plains have seen more people leaving than coming since the 1940s and, in some counties, even earlier. But the pace of depopulation has accelerated, and there is no agreement on what should be done.

The plains are forbidding and mostly semi-arid lands, covered with short or tall grass and lacking both water and trees. The earliest European explorers did not touch them. Francisco Coronado, exploring in the 1540s, surveyed only a fraction of the plains before he retreated to the Rio Grande. Three centuries later, the area was still marked on maps as the Great American Desert. Yet in the 1860s pioneers decided in earnest to turn this near-desert into productive farmland. The government spurred them on, offering 160 acres to any family willing to farm there.

Heavy rains brought bounty in the 1870s, but by the 1890s dust storms and blizzards billowed over the plains. Many farmers left, and then returned. By 1930, 5.5m people lived on the Great Plains. Gradually, as farming was mechanised, their numbers fell. In 1930 it took one farmer up to 20 hours to produce 100 bushels (2.7 tonnes) of wheat, using the most advanced technology. By 1975 he could do the same work in a quarter of the time. Today it can be done even faster. With each technological breakthrough, fewer people have to live on the plains.

Lack of water is another factor. This is, after all, a desert. Much of the Great Plains, without ground water, relies heavily on the Ogallala aquifer, a vast underwater reservoir. The Ogallala is dropping quickly; between 1990 and 2000, the net depletion was about 3.62m acre-feet a year. In the 1980s, the federal government in effect ended its policy of underwriting huge dam and irrigation projects for the region's farms and towns.

Profit margins are good, but the community has gone

Many of those who still live there have survived by buying up land from those who have left. Dale Reimers of Jamestown, North Dakota, remembers when farmers lined up to drop off their grain at the local elevator. The Reimers now own the elevator, the most recent addition to what has become a 20,000-acre farm, some 20 times the average size in North Dakota. They are doing well, but Mr Reimer still bemoans the loss of small towns. He would rather farm a quarter of his present land, and have more neighbours round him. Instead, he expects to see fewer and fewer. Profit margins are good, but the community has gone.

Over the past decade, 47 of North Dakota's 53 counties and 53 of Nebraska's 93 have seen their populations drop. "The demise of the small town", says Wes Jackson, president of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, "and the loss of the cultural capacity is replaced by an industrial mind that is at once simple and simplifying." Mr Jackson contends that with more farmers on the land, and with more small towns, more care should be taken that farming does not degrade the environment. In other words, Mr Jackson says, America needs a high "eyes-to-acre" ratio.

Mr Jackson's is just one of many arguments offered by those committed to staunching the loss of population on the plains. Although it may make economic sense to abandon a desert, many feel that America is losing a vital part of its character along the way. As farm towns continue to decline, there is a drive to transform America's agricultural policy into a scheme, more like Europe's, that would try to support rural life in general.

Troubled by subsidies

In 1996 the Republican-led Congress passed the Freedom to Farm Act. Among other things, the measure let farmers receive subsidies while planting whatever they wanted, rather than what the government told them to. In return, Congress mandated that the government would, over time, stop supporting America's farms. Commodity prices were good then, and federal payments were low enough to make the plan seem feasible.

But commodity prices plummeted, and five years later federal farm aid soared to $32 billion (bringing the total disbursements over the past 40 years to around $350 billion). Net farm income shows no signs of increasing without federal intervention. Government spending per head in the Great Plains is higher than anywhere else in the country (see map).

Yet if such spending is meant to support rural areas as well as farmers, then the government has failed. In Minnesota's 7th congressional district alone, farmers received some $4 billion in direct government payments between 1985 and 2000. Some small farmers agree that federal payments have helped them stay on the land. But, even as subsidies have increased, farm employment in the 7th district declined by 30% between 1976 and 1998.

According to Ford Runge, a professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, "the public does not seem to be getting what they think they are getting." Roughly 20% of farmers, he estimates, are receiving some 80% of the federal subsidies. This 20% also happen to own the largest farms. They are using the federal subsidies mainly to remain viable, but also to bid land away from other farmers. The cap for federal subsidies is very high; so the larger farms get, the more subsidies they receive. As large farms bid up land prices, capital costs for smaller operations rise, and young people find it harder to buy land. In this way, say Mr Runge and others, the federal government, far from propping up small farming towns, is hastening their decline.

In the 1930s, when farm programmes began, they were seen as a vital part of America's "food security". The country is now, if anything, over-fed, but farmers still depend on taxpayers for about half their income. This week the Senate inched towards passing a farm bill that would cost $171 billion over the next ten years. This has to be reconciled with an earlier House bill that would cost $168 billion over the next ten years, before George Bush can sign it. The White House is grumpy about both, and foreigners view them as calamitous. The House bill focuses on higher fixed annual payments, the Senate's on higher support prices. But both will pump yet more government cash into the plains, with the lion's share going to big farmers.

Is there another approach? Ann Veneman, the agriculture secretary, has argued that subsidies should be spread more evenly to help smaller farmers, and should include more payments for conservation. Tom Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate agriculture committee, has co-authored a measure called the Conservation Security Act, which could mark a shift towards propping up smaller operations. The bill, now embedded in the Senate legislation, would pay farmers up to $50,000 for managing their lands in ways that protect the environment. Chuck Hassebrook, director of the Centre for Rural Affairs in Walthill, Nebraska, wants the government to set aside $500m in payments to promote ecological or co-operative farming, which might bring more farm jobs.

All these ideas go down badly with owners of larger spreads. To them, preserving small farms means turning the clock back to a vanished age. Bruce Babcock, director of the Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development at Iowa State University, sees no point in trying to expand a workforce that has naturally contracted. In his view, the decline of small farms on the plains is a sign of success. Farm towns need to stop relying on the government and find a new raison d'être.

The biggest roller-coaster in the world

Apart from agriculture, the chief resource of plains towns is their people, with their pioneer virtues (so Americans feel) of persistence and ingenuity. Backers of the countryside see a great deal of entrepreneurial talent lying unused, and some are trying to harness it.

John Allen, director of the Centre for Applied Rural Innovation at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, travels to small towns to help people find alternative ways to make money. When he met members of the Nebraska Youth Development Network, they told him they wanted to build the world's largest wooden roller-coaster in the Sandhills, which cover two of America's poorest counties. The roller-coaster, they thought, would lure other young people from miles around who would stay and start businesses. Alternatively, they proposed a road race that would draw millionaires from Europe and Asia. Mr Allen turned down the roller-coaster, but the road race will go ahead this year.

Just south of the Sandhills, in McCook, Nebraska, townsfolk are trying to find new ways to keep their town from shrinking. The town's population, nearly 8,000, has declined over the past decade. Many of the smaller towns around are disappearing. Five years ago, people in McCook started the Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival. That name is notorious on the plains. In 1987 Frank and Deborah Popper, two demographers at Rutgers University in New Jersey, looked at the history of settlement on the plains and concluded that the region was ill-suited to ordinary farming. It should be left, they said, as a "buffalo commons" -- a vast restored prairie where buffalo would again roam in great numbers.

At first, plains folk saw the Poppers as east-coast doomsters. Their opposition has softened over time as inexorable forces drive them from the land. Some small farmers have unwittingly followed the Poppers' advice by selling their land to Sioux Indians, who in turn are using the land for buffalo herds.

But looming behind all these efforts is a larger notion: that the settling of the Great Plains is a human experiment which has seen its day. Jack Zaleski, the editorial page director of the Fargo Forum newspaper, has watched small towns fade over the past decade while Fargo has grown by some 20%. According to him, the changes in agriculture are so profound that the little towns will never return.

This would have come as no surprise to Major Stephen Long, who travelled through the southern plains in 1819. He reported that the land was "almost wholly unfit for cultivation and of course uninhabitable for a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence." American inventiveness -- including the six-shooter and barbed wire -- and trailer-loads of taxpayer dollars proved him wrong for a while. But it may take a new ingenuity to keep this part of America's heart from fading away.

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