WHATS going on in rural USA

To summarize don't let this older generation complain because they don't get to see their grandchildren grow up. They all had to move toward the urban areas to find jobs. Resulting in the doomed small town which includes schools, businesses and churches. Those large operations are not to blame it is those landlords that have no sense of community that have a choice. Sad to say it boils down to old fashioned greed

Want a comparison look at the Euro farm subsidy program designed for the family farmer which results in nice villages, small prosprous farmers, less polution from run off and on and on. Who to blame, well the politions, the guys that buy and own them and the nuts like us who continue to elect them based on the on air pundits who suck up to them while they all pick our pockets.

Want to read more about the subsidy program go to Washingtonpost.com today, they did a three month investigation of where the money goes and who gets it. Buy the way, our leased poltitions are voting on the new subsidy bill today. Guess who it will help. Enough Rant but feel better now.

In the early 1900s, there was a MAJOR exodus of people from the farm to urban areas. Fewer people on the farms meant less need for small town support. Many small towns across the country simply vanished.

Improved communication and transportation in the last half of the 20th century put even more pressure on small towns. With people commuting to urban areas for work, they shopped there before returning home. Small towns close to major cities became "bedroom" communities, and many have been swallowed by urban sprawl. Small towns too far away to be bedroom communities struggled to maintain the quality of life people wanted, and many people left.

I'm 63 years old. I live about 15 miles outside of Indianapolis on the farm where I grew up. When I moved back to this area in 1970, I was one of three people within a two-mile radius who commuted more than 20 miles to work. Easily 3/4 of the farmers within that radius have since retired. I can only think of one in that area that's under 45 years old. The farms, banks, stores, and everything else are larger today than a generation ago. I think this trend will continue.

As I was driving home a few evenings ago, I started counting the number of houses (or remains of houses) within two miles of my home that had vanished within my memory. I can think of 14. Within that circle also stood one general store, three schools, and two churches that are no longer here. The more rural areas will continue to decline in terms of population and amenities. Suburban sprawl will continue to grow. The pendulum swings....life goes on.

Small towns like that depend on the rural community to survive, their own population isnt enough to support squat. With farms doubling and tripling and more in size every decade means that there are 1/2 to 1/3 the rural households to support the small town businesses every decade. Then couple that with the fact that the average farmer is about 62 years old he probably doesn't have any kids in the house (unless he a spy old guy with a young wife).

The increasing size of the farms has wiped out well over half the households and the increasing age of the farmers has wiped out the 2.3 kids (or in my dad's case the 12 kids) that would have lived in the surviving households. So you've knocked out almost 80% of the rural population that supported those little towns of 800 to 1500 people (and they say their population is getting old too). So the schools shrink, the businesses do a lot less business and everyone on the street has grey hair.

Blame "Wal-Mart" all you want but Wal-Mart doesn't run corner cafes or feed stores or banks (yet) or impliment dealerships or sell barb wire. The population that supported all those businesses just isn't there anymore.

A lot of it is the same reason we *perceive* a decline in U.S. manufacturing.

Even though we produce, inflation adjusted even, a greater value of manufactured goods today then ever in the past. We even make more steel domestically today then in the 1960s.

But between better machines, bigger machines, and increasing robotization...don't need nearly as many people to do the work. So there's a big perception American manufacturing is declining, and while it is in many sectors...in others in makes increasingly valuable products with fewer and fewer workers.

There's a company near me that makes something as relatively simple as fire department hose couplings; their machines run unattended on 2nd and 3rd shift as well as over the weekend. The guys just load up blank stock before they leave for the day and lock the doors. The next morning the baskets are full of items to go through quality assurance and be shipped.

Mechanization and similiar efficiency gains (chemical fertilizers, pesticides, better genetics, better processes) mean fewer people grow more food.

These small towns grew up in a time when you'd hire on crews of drifters and other laborers to work on threshing crews or other farm labor. Today one person in a combine does the work of dozens a century ago, or of several people even 50 years ago.

Combine that with your typical Western Developed World syndrome of not making as many babies as the economy gets going good, you don't have near the employment or the need for employees or the production of kids in rural areas you did years ago.

My "rural" area is disappearing for different factors as suburban populations push into it more and more -- the fields I used to go shooting in as a kid they just announced is going to become a 27 hole golf course and other recreational stuff. Hey, better then tract homes...still the 400 acres was one heck of a nice piece of farmland. All the cornfields in town are now gated off...kind of funny to see the teens who used to hang out in them now stuck in parking lots in the commercial strip in town during the evenings!

Have you got a source for this info? I don't doubt the facts, but I'd like to read up on them further.

Of course, I can't find them at the moment...grrr. I'll do some more digging after work.

here manufacturing moved in. in the last 10 years 85-90% of farmland graded under, over half our forests clear cut(they dont even leave a blade of grass), subdivisions move in, 4 homes per acre. traffic is now a problem, as well as smog(air stagnation advisory today and yesterday), gangs in our schools. ahh, this is the good life.