Report by Marty Strange, Patricia E. Funk, Gerald Hansen, Jennifer Tully, and Donald Macke
Two Rutgers University geographers caused quite a stir when they suggested that the Great Plains will inevitably become largely depopulated and that "the wisest thing the federal government can do is start buying back great chunks of the Plains, replant the grass, reintroduce the bison—and turn out the lights.”
The idea was immediately ridiculed and denounced by public officials, editorial writers, and scholars from the region. But we couldn't help but wonder whether their protests reflected their embarrassment at the lack of a better idea?
This report reviews the economic development policies of six states in the nation's mid-section that embrace 277 counties whose economy is essentially agricultural and generally troubled. These counties constitute a rural economic region scattered in checkerboard fashion between the urban areas and larger rural trade centers of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
The region shares a one-dimensional economy heavily dependent on production of the basic agricultural commodities that are most regulated by federal farm programs. The 277 counties included in our analysis are declining in population and have higher rates of poverty than the rest of the counties in these six states. And perhaps most important, because they are scattered among six states and hold only 17 percent of the population of these states, they are politically weak.
But although scattered and weak, these communities are still home to over two million people who exhibit some of the most admired features of the American character—independence, ingenuity, and industry. We have borrowed novelist Hamlin Garland's term the "Middle Border" to capture the frontier character of this region.
National attention focused briefly on the Middle Border when the farm crisis was prominently in the news. But as the most troubled farm debt has been wrung out of the farm economy, public interest in the region has waned. Yet the needs of these communities have become more acute even as the most visible effects of the farm crisis have passed. Farm communities still must cope with the long term effects of depopulation and lower property values. At the community level, the farm crisis lingers long after the balance sheets of surviving farmers begin to improve and the immediate threat to lending institutions passes.
National agricultural policy has generally worked against these communities by encouraging crop specialization and farm consolidation, narrowing their economic base and depleting their population base. Meanwhile, the federal government has largely left economic development policy to the states.
This report turns, then, to the states to ask what they propose to do to meet the development needs of their small agricultural communities, those places in between the metropolitan areas and the rural trade centers, the undifferentiated small towns and associated farms, the hinterland.
In addressing that question, we first describe the particular circumstances of these communities, the socio-demographic and economic conditions that distinguish them from other places within the region (section II).
We then review the statutory, policy, and program basis for economic development in the six states, placing them in the context of federal rural development policy, and distilling from numerous official documents and statements what might best be termed the "development personality" of each state (section III). Here we are interested, in part, in how the states view their small communities, and whether their development personality has traits that explicitly address the needs of these communities.
While the approaches used by these states are fragmented, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, several region-wide patterns emerge from this patchwork quilt. There are certain "development strategies," or interacting programs and policies that reinforce each other, common to all the states, in greater or lesser degree. We identify four such strategies, and discuss their impact on small agricultural communities (section IV).
We then discuss our findings and their policy implications and make some recommendations (section V). We close with a word to the small agricultural communities (section VI).
In order to encourage a broad discussion of state policy toward these communities, we sent an early draft of this report to the governors of the six states and asked for their comments. Based on their comments and on those of other invited reviewers, we made significant revisions. Then we asked the governors for final comments, which we have published in their entirety (section VII).
We have been impressed by the layers of development programs, many with origins in one of the earlier episodes of enthusiasm for state economic development activity. Our analysis of these programs cannot be complete. The field is too dynamic, and the scope of activities considered by some to be "developmental" is far too broad for comprehensive treatment.
We have therefore not given equal weight in this report to all kinds of activities, nor have we given consistent treatment to activities that might be considered on the periphery of development policies. Some programs usually considered peripheral to economic development have been given more consideration because they address or purport to address the needs of rural people or places. Others that are usually considered to be more relevant to economic development we have treated only lightly because they are either focused on urban communities, or are only residues of an earlier generation of development programs, or are small in scale and impact. This report is not about state economic development policy generally, but about its relationship to small agricultural communities.
We are not impassive toward these communities. Let us make our bias clear. We don't think society owes any community, any place, any people, anything more than a fair shake. Not every ambition that has played itself out in the Middle Border is worthy of being fulfilled. There have been serious mistakes made in the name of agricultural development, especially with respect to soil and water abuse. Sometimes, whole communities have been built on the false foundation of such mistakes, and inevitable pain has followed. Neither the states nor the federal government has a duty to validate these mistakes with remedial policies aimed at propping up bad economic ventures.
Nor can we expect too much of the states. Their central place in reports like this are, in part, a reflection of the sad retreat of the federal government from its responsibility to balance the national economy by assisting in the development of distressed regions. Local governments have a responsibility as well, as does the private sector. In fact, it can be argued that the states have little or no development responsibility other than the most basic duty to govern well by providing for the essentials—education, infrastructure, and a judicially well-administered commercial code.
But the states do have a duty to provide equal access to public services to all people within their respective jurisdictions, and to avoid discrimination against people on the basis of their place of residence. They also have a responsibility to share in the cost of damages caused by their own development policies. Much of the economic and social dislocation under way in the Middle Border is a product of development policies that first encouraged growth in the region and now hasten decline.
Is the Middle Border worth saving? Not any more than any other place. But the people of the Middle Border have made important contributions to American life. They are sturdy, productive, and generally honest. For generations, they have educated, then exported, their young to other communities who have been glad to have them. We do not believe that America would be better off with the Middle Border in permanent decline.
Not many years ago, many of the states that now boast strong economies were collectively in despair, characterized as the "Rust Belt" by their closed and deteriorating industrial plants. But those stricken communities had unfulfilled potential, and the states that decided to build on, rather than deny that potential, have benefitted from it. Maybe we should think of the Middle Border, with its agricultural problems, as the "Rot Belt." Like every other place, the Middle Border has its unfulfilled potential.
A memorable Peace Corps recruitment advertisement pictured half a glass of water with a caption that went something like this: "Is this glass half empty or half full? If you think it's half full, join Peace Corps."
Many analysts see the Middle Border as a half empty place, being drained of its future. But we see it as half-fulfilled, needing appropriate responses from the public sector to help it realize its potential. We hope this report helps to provoke such responses.
