Thursday, July 09, 2009

Rural America

USA Today has an article about a shrinking NH town that includes some stats that I've never considered before about rural areas.
  • 17% of Americans live in rural areas (that seems so small to me!)
  • Only 4% of rural Americans make their living farming
The general idea of the article seems to be that governmental policies and funds for rural America are focused on farming and therefore neglect the majority of the people and industries in those areas.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm not sure what this is all coming to...thoughts?
Posted by at
Labels:

4 comments:

  1. Chris1:43 PM

    Does 4% include tractor salesmen? Or big-animal vets? Or grain distributors?

    What is the definition of rural? I bet I don't live in a "rural" area. I bet 50% of farmers making a living from farming don't live in a "rural" area. But 95% of stats are made up on the spot anyways. I didn't see any references behind those numbers, but those details get in the way of selling articles, I guess.

    I think that article leaves more questions than it answers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bill4:00 PM

    I think the distinctions that the article describes between the 4 categories of rural areas are interesting. Clearly portions of rural New York is not supported in the same way that much of rural Indiana is.

    Sometimes when driving around we come upon a town and I can't help wonder why people live there or what sustains the population. In many areas, it clearly is not farming and there is no sign of obvious industry.

    Strip out the cities, then the suburbs, and I guess that whatever is left is "rural".

    ReplyDelete
  3. JoAnna9:35 PM

    I agree that the article is lacking on credibility...it is USA Today. But even if the 4% stat is close, and even if three times as many people work to support farmers, we are still talking about less than 20% of the population. I am fairly confident I live in a rural area (we are zoned agriculture, our town is 5 miles away and has about 1200 people in it) and none of our neighbors make their living in any way related to farming.

    I think, therefore, the general idea of the article might be truthful - that policies and subsidies for rural areas focus on a small, tiny bit of the population at the expense of most folks. It would be interesting to see what sort of solutions are possible.

    Our town was home to a large garment factory (it's been called a sweat shop) until the 80s. When it left it took much of the town businesses with it. Our main street (all two blocks of it) is 50% empty. If the main focus of policy makers is to support the farms, I can't envision our town being revitalized. Without commercial/industrial/tourist reasons to visit, there is no demand to support local town businesses. Why should farming get priority over other interests?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Chris11:19 AM

    Your points that farmimg may get unfair attention for subsidies, I agree with. I don't have any good ideas on how that can be addressed. I don't like the idea of subsidizing farming at all, but I really don't like some of the cut-throat practices that even small family farms around here resort to in the name of fiscal efficiency that are bad land-stewardship practices. In my mind we should be less concerned with the fairness of their subsidies and more concerned with the fairness of the lack of regulation, especially land stewardship practices.

    Also, defining "rural" seems to be a curious difficulty. Again, I have no good ideas on this, but I would not necessarily include an area where people drive to a City for work as being rural. Also, if a County has a town center in it that has 1200 people, population density alone should indicate that town center, at least, is not rural. So is the problem one of scope? Should we define rural areas based on tax parcel rather than county? I am in an agricultural-zoned area as well, with less than 5 miles to a town center with at least 1200 people, but a lot of my neighbors ARE farmers, making a living that way. For them they get a tax break on their property taxes. This to me is a fair and effective policy; if you are zoned agricultural, and make a living from farming, you get a tax break because you need a lot of land to make a living. This helps farms stay farms. The rest of us, living in subdivisions built in old farm fields, driving to the city for work every day, have to pay more.

    This has been a good thread, I must add some reading to my list on the issue of agricultural preservation versus subsidization.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)