Across the Nation

Iowa: A report by the Des Moines Register finds that rural students are at least as well prepared for college as urban students. The quality of education at small schools has been under scrutiny by state officials, but the new analysis shows that on every metric examined rural students do as well as urban students.

Kentucky: Eastern Kentucky University is launching a new graduate degree program aimed at improving the quality of rural education in the state. The program seeks to train people who will become researchers working on developing new models that help rural schools meet their unique challenges.

Kansas: Climbing prices for crude oil are making low-yielding wells in rural Kansas profitable again. Many of the wells scattered across rural Kansas yield as little as 10 barrels per day. But with oil at $100 per barrel, they are not only profitable to operate, but the wells are generating meaningful economic activity in some communities.

Nationwide: News coverage of the nationwide foreclosure crises is focused on the impacts in urban America. New research indicates, however, that rural foreclosure rates are on the rise as well. When loans on mobile and prefabricated homes are included in the calculation, rural foreclosure rates may be higher than urban rates.

Tennessee: Previously fallow land is coming into production in Tennessee and across the South as the price of corn and soybeans remains high. In addition to putting fallow land into production, land previously in conservation programs as well as land in cotton production is all being shifted to more commodity grain production. In Tennessee soybean acres are expected to rise by 139 percent in 2008.

South Dakota: Grasslands in the state and across the nation are under pressure due to rising demands for grain production. Much of this land, currently in the Conservation Reserve Program, is being put into grain production as the land becomes available. This includes an estimated 300,000 acres in South Dakota this year and 2.5 million acres nationally.

Oregon: The state-funded Office of Rural Policy is set to lose its yearly appropriation from the state. The move has set off a firestorm of controversy over politics, policy, and rural development in the state.

Contact: Brian Depew, briand@cfra.org, 402.687.2013 x 1015 for more information.