As Democrats turn away from Iowa, some in party see ways to get more rural votes: show up, be humble, value work

Chart shows examples of Third Way analysis that found "most Democratic candidates improved on President Biden's 2020 performance in rural America — with some notable exceptions," such as Black nominees, Josh Kraushaar of Axios reports.

One step forward, two steps back, rural Democrats might say. The midterm elections showed that Democrats can still win elections with rural votes if they show up and ask for them, but the party's plan to end the Iowa caucuses' first place in the presidential nomination process "is not a great way to mend fences in rural America, where the Democratic brand has become virtually unmarketable," Storm Lake Times Pilot Editor Art Cullen writes in The New York Times, essentially rewriting a column that appeared in his weekly.

Art Cullen

For the locals, Cullen accepts some of the Democrats' rationale, but not "two frauds cooked up to put the caucuses to rest," one that the state party "messed up reporting results" in 2020. In both columns, he blames that on a cellphone app suggested by national Democrats, who rejected Iowa Democrats' plan.

For the national audience, Cullen seems to accept that "We are too white. . . . But diversity did have a chance here. Barack Obama was vaulted to the White House" in 2008 by a strong showing in rural caucuses, with the help of rural newspapers. "Iowa had no problem giving a gay man, Pete Buttigieg, and a Jewish democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, the two top tickets out to New Hampshire last cycle."

Caucuses have virtues: "Candidates were forced to meet actual voters in village diners across the state. We took our vetting role seriously; you had better be ready to analyze Social Security’s actuarial prospects. . . . We did a decent, if imperfect, job of winnowing the field. Along with New Hampshire, we set things up so South Carolina could often become definitive, which it will be no longer." Cullen says "It's OK that South Carolina goes first," because having the first presidential voting hasn't paid off for Iowa: "Nothing really happened to stop the long decline as the state’s Main Streets withered, farmers disappeared and the undocumented dwell in the shadows."

Another view: Froma Harrop, whose column appears in some rural papers, says the change will be more democratic because most South Carolina Democrats are Black, and Black voters haven't had a big voice in the nomination process; and because the caucus process "favors activists who are not deterred by snow, cold or the dark and have the luxury of free evening hours. These folks are skilled in working the intricacies of the caucus process and often aggressive. Not favored are Democrats who work nights at Walmart, drive an Uber after hours and have little children to care for."

In a piece for The Hill, William S. Becker sees "signs that Democrats can build a more substantial base in rural America before 2024. All they have to do is think differently, talk differently and act differently." he cites a report from the Rural-Urban Bridge Initiative, "a group of experts brought together in 2021 by Appalachian farmer and author Anthony Flaccavento and several colleagues." They point out that "more than 40 percent of voters are rural in many battleground states," Becker writes. "Since 2006, their partisan allegiances have depended on which party pays more attention to them. Winning as little as 2 to 3 percent of their votes can change election outcomes."

Becker adds, "RUBI interviewed 50 rural candidates and researched recent studies on what makes candidates successful in rural areas. It distilled the results into 11 recommendations that seem more about respect and common courtesy than political strategy. They include listening more and talking less; respecting the local people’s knowledge and history; being humble and mission-driven rather than ego-driven; focusing on problem-solving; emphasizing involvement in local activities; treating voters of color as individuals rather than voting blocs, as well as not pandering to racism or gratuitously antagonizing white voters."

Becker also cites a piece in The American Prospect, in which Robert Kuttner writes, “Just showing up turns out to be hugely important, as a sign of respect and commitment;” and a post from Bryce Oates and farmer Jake Davis in The Pulse, a nonpartisan blog focused on North Carolina: “If Democrats truly want to increase their competitiveness in rural America, they should start now by putting working people at the center of their narrative while supporting bold, popular policies that would allow those people to live a good life.”

UPDATE: On NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Jon Tester said Democrats should focus their messaging “more on the things we’re doing for rural America,” such as infrastructure. The Montana Democrat "pointed to bills he’s working on that deal with big packers and meat consolidation, which he said would help cow and calf operators make a better living."

From a weekly in the Texas Panhandle, and close to the Okla. Panhandle, a blend of weather news and photo art

Republished with permission of The Canadian Record, Canadian, Texas; for a larger version, click on it.

New generation of entrepreneurs emerges in Great Plains

Can “energy combined with business and social media savvy” seen in a new kind of young agribusiness entrepreneur help reverse the population decline in rural America?

That’s the question posed in a Christian Science Monitor story by Laurent Belsie, who gives anecdotal evidence that the Great Plains has a new generation of entrepreneurs — the first born after the farm crisis in the 1980s — who want to make their way by starting businesses in America’s farming communities. He describes them as “young people who straddle the end of the millennial generation and the beginning of Generation Z.”

Great Plains (Department of the Interior)

They go straight to building businesses in small communities rather than going first to cities to acquire skills.

“Unlike those who take over a conventional farm and help make it bigger and more efficient, these enterprising young people are starting small and unconventional operations,” Belsie writes.

Among several examples of young entrepreneurs starting “small and unconventional operations” is Hannah Esch of Nebraska, who owns Oak Barn Beef. Her new business has $52,000 in sales and has sold out of beef four times. She expects to double the business in the next year, around the time she finishes college.

Twin brothers Matt and Joe Brugger, who market beef directly from their own cows and grow hops for microbreweries, are renovating an old farmhouse on their family homestead. Free housing is a benefit, but there’s more to their desire to be back home. “It’s the place their great-grandfather bought when he moved here from Switzerland. It’s where their grandfather was born and where they played as children when the house was later rented by people who kept sheep.”

Gothenburg in Dawson County
and Nebraska (Wikipedia map)

Last September in Gothenburg, Neb. (pop. 3,448), Taylor Walker opened T. Walker’s restaurant on Main Street. He left college a year short of a teaching degree, explaining, “I’m not a real fan of the big cities … I had seen how the community of Gothenburg treated my dad with his businesses. If they continue that for me, then I owe it to them to be here.” Gothenburg also has a new newspaper, the Gothenburg Leader, started by two local entrepreneurs. The town is a financial and services center for the surrounding agricultural area.

“There is a spirit in these young people that is different than anything I’ve ever experienced,” says Tom Field, director of the eight-year-old Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Of the 120 or more of its alumni, “90 percent of them say their goal is to return — or they choose to live in — a small or rural community. These are students who have had international experiences, had internships on both coasts, but they choose to live and work and play in places where they have a deep affinity with the culture, the people, and the landscape.”

Proposal for what would be largest U.S. wind farm, already under construction, is dealt a potentially fatal blow

The Texas Public Utility Commission last week unanimously rejected a proposal for American Electric Power Co. to supply its customers with energy from what would be the nation's largest wind farm, saying it doesn't offer enough benefits for utility customers as currently structured, Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Chris Martin report for Bloomberg News.

The Wind Catcher facility is already under construction in the Oklahoma panhandle and is scheduled to be completed in late 2020. AEP invested $4.5 billion transmission lines from Wind Catcher to customers in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana. The company, which plans to eventually buy the wind farm outright, planned to pay for the lines with a strategy often used by coal, nuclear, and natural gas power plants: by passing on costs and some profit onto customers' bills.

But the Texas commission argued that the project might not be as profitable as AEP is projecting. DeAnn Walker, chairman of the Texas commission, said last week at the hearing that "The costs are known, but the benefits are based on a lot of assumptions that are questionable."

Meanwhile, "Oklahoma’s attorney general and a state administrative law judge concluded in February the company failed to prove there was an economic need for the project and that it left customers shouldering too much of the risk," Efstathiou and Martin report.

Water levels keep dropping in massive Ogallala Aquifer, hitting rural areas the hardest

Michigan State University map;
click on the image to enlarge it.

Overuse of groundwater is dangerously depleting the High Plains Aquifer (also known as the Ogallala Aquifer) to the point where six miles of surface streams are drying up every year. And "while the drying out of America’s agricultural breadbasket ($35 billion in crops a year) ultimately may pinch people in cities, it is hitting rural areas hardest," Bruce Finley reports for The Denver Post.

The Ogallala covers eight states (Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, South Dakota). No agreement has been reached among them about how to save the aquifer, despite years of concern; here are our reports from 2015, 2013 and 2012.

The stalemate has led to some perverse actions. "Colorado officials faced with legal challenges from Kansas over dwindling surface water in the Republican River have found that their best option to comply with a 1942 compact is to take more water out of the aquifer," Finley reports. "The state bought wells from farmers during the past decade and has been pumping out 11,500 acre-feet of water a year, enough to satisfy a small city, delivering it through a $60 million, 12-mile pipeline northeast of Wray to artificially resuscitate the river."

Farmers say they're trying to use less groundwater, but it's difficult. "We have come to realize that, yeah, we are overmining it. We are acutely aware of that now. There’s a definite attitude to make more than just the natural progression as far as efficiency," said Rod Lenz, president of the Republican River Water Conservation District. Here's a worst-case scenario: If the Ogallala runs dry, it will take about 6,000 years to replenish itself, David Biello wrote in Scientific American magazine.

Farmers struggle with more sustainable watering practices, which are often more expensive, with corn prices that have dropped to $3.50 a bushel, down from $7 a bushel in recent years. But they can't address the problem alone, since their customers are urban. "People in cities increasingly demand environmentally correct crops, which requires more water. "If they want natural grain-fed cattle, and non-GMO (genetically modified organism) crops — all that good stuff — it is going to take water," farm-equipment dealer Cody Powell told Finley. By using pesticides and GMO seeds, he points out, "With the same amount of water, you could get twice as much corn."

Summit discusses possible solutions to growing problem of wild-horse overpopulation in West

Wild horses play near Reno, Nevada. (Reno Gazette-Journal photo by Andy Barron)

At a summit on Aug. 22-24, officials said that "swollen populations of federally protected wild horses roaming 10 Western states are starved and damaging rangelands," Michelle Price and Scott Sonner report for The Associated Press. "Members of Utah’s congressional delegation and a U.S. Interior Department official speaking at the National Horse and Burro Summit in Salt Lake City all described an unsustainable population of wild horses that’s nearly three times the size that federal officials think the rangeland can support."

Suzanne Roy with the American Wild Horse Campaign says that horse-protection advocates were not invited, and says the summit catered to agriculture interests that want to slaughter wild horses. But a wildland resources professor at Utah State University, Terry Messmer, said the summit was attended by people who care about the horses' welfare as well as Western rangeland management.

"A report by Congress’ General Accounting Office made public last week noted that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management removed nearly 135,000 horses from the range between 2000 and 2016 but the population on the range doubled and the number of horses in holding facilities increased sevenfold. The BLM asserts that U.S. rangeland can sustain fewer than 27,000 horses and burros, but there are more than 72,000 wild horses on the rangeland and about 46,000 in holding facilities," AP reports. The horses sometimes compete for resources with grazing animals owned by ranchers.

Participants in the summit were divided about the solution to the problem. Some say contraceptive vaccines will check the population humanely. Aurelia Skipworth, deputy assistant interior secretary for fish and wildlife and national parks, said euthanization is also part of the solution, and that Congress must also pass President Trump's budget request to allow wild horses to be sold without requiring buyers to guarantee the horses won't be resold for slaughter. U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) said at the summit that he supports state-level management of the problem, and that euthanization is a kinder solution than food slaughter for what he calls a companion animal.

AEP plans to eventually own Okla. wind farm that will be nation's largest; trend in power industry

Two Oklahoma subsidiaries of American Electric Power Co. are betting $4.5 billion on a project to pipe energy from—and eventually buy—a huge wind farm under construction in the Oklahoma panhandle, Paul Monies reports for The Oklahoman. The 2,000-megawatt, 300,000-acre Wind Catcher Energy Connection facility in Cimarron and Texas counties will be the nation's largest when it's completed, probably in late 2020. AEP must get approval from federal regulators in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas as well as from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to purchase the plant, and is expected to file plans with them on July 31, Bloomberg News reports.

Graphic by Windpower Engineering & Development; click on it for a larger version

As part of the deal, Invenergy will build the farm with GE wind turbines and own it for the first five years of operation, at which point the utilities will assume ownership. From the beginning, Public Service Co. and Southwestern Electric Power Co. will get a dedicated 765-kilovolt tie line to send energy to a substation in Tulsa, 350 miles away. PSO will get 600 megawatts for its 547,000 customers in eastern and southwestern Oklahoma, while SWEPCO will get the other 1,400 megawatts for its 530,000 customers in surrounding areas of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. PSO and SWEPCO told Monies that "the project will support about 4,000 direct jobs and another 4,400 indirect jobs during construction. It will have about 80 permanent jobs once it's operational. Local schools and counties in the Oklahoma Panhandle will receive about $300 million in property tax revenue over the life of the project."

In Oklahoma, long a fossil-fuels hub, the shift to wind energy is significant. "With the additional wind capacity, renewable energy will make up 40 percent of PSO's generating capacity by 2021. The utility already has 1,137 megawatts of wind — 22 percent of total capacity — through various power-purchase agreements," Monies reports. It's also an example of how utilities wanting to grow are increasingly looking to wind and solar. As demand for electricity is weakening and the cost of building solar and wind farms is decreasing, utilities are buying the farms outright and passing the cost of acquisition on to customers, Bloomberg reports.

Overpumping is draining the nation's aquifers; water levels down 64% in past two decades

Decreasing groundwater levels are depleting the nation's aquifers, draining farmers of much needed water and leading to increased costs for well owners, water utilities and the general public, Ian James and Steve Reilly report for USA Today and The Desert Sun. Overpumping is being blamed on agriculture—which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the nation’s use of fresh groundwater—and more water being drained for cities, expanding development and industries. Overall, more water is being pumped from the ground than cane be replenished.

"Nationwide, water levels have declined in 64 percent of the wells included in the government database during the past two decades," James and Reilly write. "The average decline among decreasing wells has been more than 10 feet, and in some areas the water table has dropped more than 100 feet during that period—more than 5 feet per year." Since the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. has lost an estimated 1,000 cubic kilometers of water from the nation’s aquifers. (USDA map)

Decreasing groundwater levels are leading to increased costs for well owners, water utilities and the general public, James and Reilly write. "As water levels drop, more energy is required to lift water from wells, and those pumping bills are rising. In areas where aquifers are being severely depleted, new wells are being drilled hundreds of feet into the earth at enormous cost. That trend of going deeper and deeper can only go on so long. When groundwater levels fall to precarious lows and wells are exhausted, farming businesses can suffer. And in particularly hard-hit communities, such as parts of California, homeowners have been left relying on tanker trucks to deliver their water."

One of the nation's biggest sources, the Ogallala Aquifer, is being severely depleted, James and Reilly write. The Ogallala covers 174,000 square miles in parts of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas and "makes possible about one-fifth of the country’s output of corn, wheat and cattle." With water drying up, "some farmers are adapting by switching to different crops. Others are shutting down their drained wells and trying to scratch out a living as dryland farmers, relying only on the rains." (USA Today map: Orange areas have lost 5 to 15 feet of water, yellow 0 to 4 feet)

Ogallala Aquifer quickly running dry for Western Kansas farmers, ranchers

Farmers and ranchers in the Great Plains are pumping water faster from the Ogallala Aquifer—which covers 174,000 square miles in eight states—than it can be naturally replenished, putting Western Kansas' water source in danger of drying up, Lindsay Wise reports for McClatchy Newspapers. The Ogallala, which is Western Kansas' only significant water source, replaces less than one inch for every 10 inches pumped out. Once it empties, it would take 6,000 years to naturally refill. (USDA map)

"The vast freshwater reservoir beneath the prairie formed 5 million to 10 million years ago as streams draining from the Rocky Mountains deposited water in the clay, sand and gravel beneath the Great Plains," Wise writes. "The water lay there undisturbed for epochs until enterprising homesteaders who settled the West discovered the liquid bonanza that would make their arid land bloom. Now, in a geological blink of an eye, the Ogallala, which made the Great Plains the nation’s breadbasket, is in peril."

"The disappearing water supply poses a twofold danger," Wise writes. "It could end a way of life in a region where the land and its bounty have been purchased by the toil and sweat of generations of farmers. It also threatens a harvest worth $21 billion a year to Kansas alone and portends a fast-approaching—and largely unstoppable—water crisis across the parched American West."

Farmers are turning to "cutting-edge technologies to make the most efficient use of the water they have left," Wise writes. "They’re contemplating something almost unimaginable just a generation ago: voluntary pacts with their neighbors to reduce irrigation. And many are investing their long-term hopes in an astronomically expensive water transportation project that isn’t likely ever to be built."

"The Arkansas River, which once flowed out of Colorado into western Kansas, is nothing but a dry ditch now, its riverbed reduced to a rugged obstacle course for all-terrain vehicles," Wise writes. "And average rainfall here is just 14 to 16 inches a year, nowhere near enough to replace the water that farmers draw from the Ogallala." (Read more)

Demand for corn threatening milkweed, and thus the monarch butterfly, which lives off the plant

Scientists and conservationists in the Great Plains are leading a crusade to save milkweed, and in turn, the monarch butterfly, which lives solely on the plant, Michael Wines reports for The New York Times. While there are many theories for the demise of the two, the main concern is that a rising demand for corn is destroying the land where milkweed thrives. (Pentagraph photo by Steve Smedley: Monarch feeds on milkweed)

In the summer of 2010, the University of Northern Iowa counted 176 monarchs in its 100 acres of prairie grass and flowers, but this year, counted only 11, Wines writes: "The decline has no single cause. Drought and bad weather have decimated the monarch during some recent migrations. Illegal logging of its winter home in Mexico has been a constant threat. Some studies conclude that pesticides and fungicides contribute not just to the monarchs’ woes, but to population declines among bees, other butterflies and pollinators in general."

The greatest threat, though, "is its dwindling habitat in the Midwest and the Great Plains, the vast expanse over which monarchs fly, breed new generations and die during migrations every spring and autumn," Wines writes. And this is due in large part to a rising demand in corn. "Since 2007, farmers nationwide have taken more than 17,500 square miles of land out of federal conservation reserves," a federal program that pays growers to leave land fallow for wildlife and soil conservation. "Iowa has lost a quarter of its reserve land; Kansas, nearly 30 percent; South Dakota, half."

"A study published in February in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed land use in five states — Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas and Nebraska — in the broad arc of farmland where corn and soybeans are intensively planted," Wines writes. "Over the five years from 2006 to 2011, the study concluded, 5 percent to 30 percent of the grasslands were converted to corn and soybean fields, a rate it said was 'comparable to deforestation rates in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia.'”

Some groups are pushing for federal legislation to save monarch habitats, Wines writes. Others want to education or encourage businesses to work safely around the butterflies, or provide habitats for them. But Laura Jackson, a University of Northern Iowa biologist and director of its Tallgrass Prairie Center, worries that people will forget about the butterflies. She told Wines, “Monarchs are just like other iconic species. Once people stop being accustomed to seeing them, they stop caring and they forget. Support drops like a ratchet.” (Read more)

Farmers are using subsidies meant to conserve water to use even more water

The U.S. government has given billions of dollars in subsidies to help farmers buy better irrigation systems to conserve water. But new studies show many farmers are misusing the money, and are using even more water, reports Ron Nixon of The New York Times. (NYT photo by Matthew Staver: A center-pivot sprinkler in Kansas)

Since 1997, the government has given about $4.2 billion in conservation subsidy payments to landowners, with $1 billion used to help agricultural producers increase the efficiency of irrigation, reports Nixon. Studies by the University of California, Davis and New Mexico State University found that farmers in Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado "who received payments under the conservation subsidy were using some of their water savings to expand irrigation or grow thirstier crops, not to reduce consumption," Nixon notes.

Craig Cox, a senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group, told Nixon, “Given that we just had the worst drought in the last 50 years, lawmakers need to really look at this program and how it’s having the opposite effect of what was intended." (Read more)

Diminishing groundwater has been a problem in many states, with 40 aquifers seriously depleted of water. The problem has been especially bad in west-central Kansas, where up to a fifth of the irrigated farmland along a 100-mile swath of the aquifer has already gone dry, and in Northwest Kansas, where a 100-mile zone has been labeled as high priority.

Texas Panhandle papers combine to survive, but competition continues

In the Texas Panhandle, the population is sparse, and in some counties getting sparser. That's bad news for the newspapers in the area, some of which are being forced to combine to stay alive. But that doesn't mean the end of competition.

Briscoe County had only 1,637 people at the 2010 census, but Sally Arnold Threet bought the Briscoe County News, and transformed it, writes Laverne Zabielski, who recently sold the Motley County Tribune to Threet: "It had come alive: full of stories, ads and photos. What that communicated to me was that Briscoe County was also alive." Before, "It seemed to represent a community that was dwindling and a newspaper on its way out. Other papers, however, were inspiring: The Clarendon Enterprise and The Canadian Record."

But looking good and making money aren't the same thing. Arnold says she had to cut back the paper's print edition to monthly, with weekly online updates, and expand its coverage and circulation area into parts of larger Hall County, to the east, and smaller Motley County, to the southeast, so it could survive and print biweekly. She dubbed the combination the Caprock Courier, after the geologic formation that underlies the Llano Estacado, the high plain of the Panhandle.

Now Larry and Laverne Zabielski's paper is part of it, and Arnold announced in this week's paper that it will again be printed weekly again. Laverne Zabielski said in a Facebook post, "Becoming the publisher and editor of the Motley County Tribune was a dream come true. Selling the paper to Caprock Courier Publisher Sally Arnold is a dream come true."

Zabielski wrote that she and her husband bought the Tribune in 2007 "because of its strong, historical connection to Motley County and because my ancestors had settled here," but family obligations forced them to move to Kentucky in 2008. They published the paper from there, with the help of digital technology and people in Motley County. (Motley is just outside the Panhandle, according to the more or less official definition, but is in the territory of the Panhandle Press Association.)

Valley Tribune map  

Ironically, Threet, 38, has also become a remote publisher, moving to Tennessee to be with her new husband. But her parents still live in Bricsoe County, and she says she has "lucked out" by having staff members who have many skills and don't need full-time employment at the Courier.

The three counties are also served by another newspaper, the weekly Valley Tribune, based at Quitaque, near the counties' conjunction. It is the successor of the Quitaque Tribune and is published by Becky and Luke Taylor, who bought it from family members Jan. 1. It does not put news online and bills itself as the "Voice of the Rolling Plains," the geographic area east of the Llano Estacado.

Farmland prices fall in parts of Midwest, Southeast; price rises in Central Plains slow down

The rise of agricultural land prices in the U.S. farm belt slowed considerably or even reversed in the first quarter of the year. Non-irrigated farmland in the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's region was up 3.4 percent, much less than the 7.7 percent recorded in the first quarter of 2012. The  St. Louis bank reported that land values in parts of the Midwest and Southeast regions fell an average of 2.3 percent from 2012 to 2013.

Even though numbers are down, they had been at record levels over the past year, rising a total of 19.3 percent, but signs of a slowdown are emerging, reports Mark Peters for The Wall Street Journal: "The benchmark corn contract has fallen more than 20 percent from records set last summer as federal forecasters predict a record corn crop this autumn," and farmers' costs are increasing.

Nathan Kauffman, an economist with the Kansas City bank, said it will take a few quarters to determine whether the first quarter's "modest" slowdown marks a fundamental shift in the farmland market or a short-term ebb, reports Peters. We wrote about the rising price of farmland and the fear of a crash here. (Wall Street Journal graphic)

Wind energy boosts economy, jobs in Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, other rural areas

A new study concludes that wind energy production can lead to higher incomes and more local jobs, especially for rural residents, reports the Daily Yonder. Among the more than 1,000 counties studied in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, for the period from 2000 to 2008, "for each megawatt of wind power installed in the county," the county's personal income increased more than $2,000, from $9,300 to $11,500.

The top 25 percent of counties increased their total county income by an average of $2.6 million, and saw an increase of 132 jobs, the Yonder reports: "The study also found that the economic impact of wind-energy production increased if a county had a greater percentage of rural population, was located farther from a highway interchange or major city, or if a greater percentage of the population had earned an associate’s degree." (Read more) (Map by Energy Economics shows the total installed wind power capacity in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains)

Great Plains employment rises, reversing trend

Great Plains states have seen a remarkable turnaround in employment, and are one of the few rural areas in the country experiencing growth, according to a report by the National Agricultural & Rural Development Policy Center, reports the Daily Yonder.

Great Plains employment steadily declined from 2001 to 2007 (above), as most other regions were growing, but from 2007 to 2011 (below), the opposite was true, with the Great Plains showing growth, and most other areas seeing a decline. Researchers said, “Growth in the nation’s heartland likely reflects higher commodity prices and the energy boom," and “its sparse population may have insulated this region from the housing bust.”

In rural areas nationwide, employment rates in mining, retail, waste management and self-employment are up, while there has been a drop in rates for jobs in farming, manufacturing, and construction, the Yonder reports.

Price of farmland keeps rising; more fear a crash

The price of farmland, specifically in the Corn Belt, Northern Plains and Great Lakes states, keeps going up, and has more people worried that it will crash.

The value of farmland in Nebraska rose 36 percent per acre from 2007 to 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During the same period, values rose 30 percent in North Dakota, 25 percent in Kansas, South Dakota and Minnesota, 24 percent in Iowa, 17 percent in Illinois and Indiana, 14 percent in Missouri and Ohio, 11 percent in Michigan, and 7 percent in Wisconsin. Values also rose 8 percent in New York, 7 percent in North Carolina, 6 percent in Kentucky and 4 percent in West Virginia, but stayed steady, or dropped, in every other state. (Read more)

National Agricultural Statistics Service graph

"In 2010, excellent Illinois farmland was selling for a modest $7,000 per acre instead of the current $13,000 per acre," reports Marcia Zarley Taylor for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. In a poll conducted by DTN, 50 percent of respondents said they think Corn Belt farmland prices are forming a bubble headed for a crash, 39 percent believe a bubble is forming but will have a soft landing, and 9 percent believe farmland values aren't close to a top yet and will continue to rise, Taylor writes.

Mike Duffy, an economist at Iowa State University, told USA Today reporter Christoper Doering that in Iowa, "An acre of farmland that a decade ago sold for an average of $2,275 now goes for $8,700," and last year "an 80-acre parcel near Boyden in Sioux County, some of the most fertile ground in the Corn Belt, sold for a record $21,900 per acre."

Michael Hein of the Liberty Trust and Savings Bank, in the southeast Iowa town of Durant, told Doering, "The concern clearly is not so much how much higher are they going to go, but when this bubble breaks, how low will they go and what will the aftermath of that be?" (Read more)

Experts differ on role of climate change in drought

A new study says climate change had nothing to do with the drought of 2012, but some experts disagree with the assessment. The study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found it was a "flash drought" caused by reduction in moisture coming in from the Gulf of Mexico, Ken Anderson reports for Brownfield Ag News. “This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundred years,” lead author Martin Hoerling said. “Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event.”

Nevertheless, Brad Rippey, a meteorologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said climate change had some sort of impact on the drought, Art Hovey reports for the Lincoln Journal Star. "We are in a warming climate," Rippey said. "That’s indisputable.” Rippey noted that 2012 included "a dip of more than 25 percent in the size of the corn crop nationally," and the U.S. has experienced six of the hottest temperatures on record in the past 11 years, with the annual average temperature “way off the charts.” (Read more)

The report has drawn sharp criticism from climatologists, Scott Rosenfield reports for Outside magazine. Dr. Kevin Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said the report was "needlessly confusing, scientifically problematic" and failed to account for "the cumulative effects of drought on heat and wildfire risk." The 2012 drought had an estimated $12 billion damper on the economy and has been widely attributed to climate change, Rosenfield notes. (Read more)

Here's the latest Drought Monitor map from the University of Nebraska. For a larger version, click on the map.

Underground water levels in high plains shrinking

Threatened by another summer of crop-shriveling drought, Kansans have agreed to across-the-board cuts in water use. In the 100 square-mile “high priority” (meaning particularly parched) zone of Northwest Kansas, Groundwater District 4 reached a consensus to reduce groundwater pumping by 20 percent over the next five years, writes Jim Malewitz of Stateline.

He writes that Kansans are gambling on short-term wants for a longer-term need — to preserve the aquifer their lives depend upon. The plan is just one of many major efforts to fend off a slow-moving disaster with national implications: The High Plains Aquifer, which feeds some of the world’s most productive croplands, is running dry.

The aquifer, also called the Ogallala, is one of the world’s largest underground sources of freshwater, he writes. It stretches 174,000 square miles through the middle of the country from South Dakota to northwest Texas, touching six states, watering more than one-quarter of all irrigated acreage in the U.S. and some of world’s largest grain cattle feedlots. The Ogallala also provides drinking water to four of every five people living above it.

Since Americans first began to seriously irrigate the Great Plains, beginning in the 1940s, water levels across most of the Ogallala have fallen at least five feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Almost one-fifth of the area has dropped at least 25 feet, while 11 percent has lost 50 feet or more. In some of the worst-off areas of Kansas and Texas, the water table has declined as much as 200 feet. The most recent drought has compounded the problem, drying up riverbeds and forcing farmers to rely even more heavily on groundwater.

Country's middle becoming hotspot for start-up technology companies

A technology scene is growing in the middle of the country, with dozens of new ventures starting every year, investors committing hundreds of millions of dollars, and state governments partnering with private organizations to promote it all. "They are calling it the Silicon Prairie," reports John Eligon of The New York Times. The region contains just 5.7 percent of U.S. tech-investment deals, but it's just one of two places that experienced increased investment from the beginning of 2011, according to a joint report by the Angel Resources Institute, Silicon Valley Bank and CB Insights. (NYT Photo by Mark Kegans: Employees of an Iowa technology company)

About 15 to 20 technology start-ups are started every year in eastern Nebraska, a more than three times increase from five years ago, according to the Omaha Chamber of Commerce. Over the past seven months, about 60 start-ups have presented ideas in Missouri, and 160 start-ups in Iowa applied in 2010 with Startup City Des Moines, an incubator financed with $700,000 in public and private money, including a quarter-million dollars from the state.

"Traditionally, you’d say, 'Hey, if I want the safe lifestyle, I’ll stay here and I’ll do what generations before have done,'" said Jeff Slobotski, Omaha native and founder of Silicon Prairie News, a site covering the region’s tech scene. "Now, there is a newer potential in terms of what can take place here and not having to hop on the first plane out of here, saying, 'Hey, I’m going to set up shop in the Midwest and make a go at it here.'" Many people credit Silicon Prairie News for the region's start-up growth, Eligon reports, because other than writing about start-up news, the site organizes conventions to connect entrepreneurs with investors.

The region's tech entrepreneurs say the nature of their businesses is unique to the Midwest. Companies that have started in the last year include Ag Local, which provides an online marketplace to trade meat, and Tikly, which allows bands to sell concert tickets. There are also start-ups outside the information technology field that focus on biotechnology, manufacturing and medical devices. (Read more)

Drought persists in Plains, stunting winter wheat

Though drought in the Midwest seems to be easing, drought in the Great Plains continues to deepen, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture Drought Monitor. Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska all saw drought expansion, which is hindering growth of the new winter wheat crop in those states. Livestock grazing was also poor.

About 60 percent of the U.S. was listed in "moderate" drought as of Nov. 6, Carey Gillam of Reuters notes. That's down slightly from a week earlier. But the portion of the U.S. under "extreme" or "exceptional" drought rose slightly to 19.36 from 19.04 percent, mostly because of deepened drought in the Plains. In the High Plains, which includes Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, the two highest drought levels covered 84 percent of the region. (Read more)