Quick hits: More bacon; thriving town-owned grocery store; shocking fertilizer prices; drones for rural duties?

Five-month-old pigs from the latest breeding line Smithfield 
has developed. (Smithfield Foods photo via WSJ)

Just like lots of people, pork companies would like more bacon. For pigs to produce more bacon, they need bigger bellies, a trait pork industry breeders have been developing for years. "Today, slaughtered hogs weigh about 285 pounds on average, a 30-pound increase since the late 1990s," reports Patrick Thomas of The Wall Street Journal. "The increase in hog weight coincided with the explosion in popularity of bacon as more than just a breakfast item." With bacon in demand and razor-thin profit margins, the pork industry is using breeding programs to "build a better pig." 

St. Paul, Kansas, hadn't had a local grocery store for more than two decades, but in 2005, the town's new mayor challenged his community to use municipal support to plan and build a grocery store. St. Paul residents embraced the challenge and the St. Paul Area Community Development Corporation stepped in to help with planning and financial legwork, reports Kansas State University. In 2008, the St. Paul Supermarket opened, and it continues to thrive as a town-supported grocery store. Its motto is "the friendly store." Read its success blueprint here.

Fertilizer costs are high in the currency of corn. (Krista Swanson, National Corn Growers Association )

With alarmingly high fertilizer costs and falling commodity prices, U.S. farmers are grappling with how to stay afloat in today's market. "Farmers are in the middle of calling input suppliers to get quotes for fall fertilizer, and the prices are shocking," reports Tyne Morgan of Farm Journal. "The corn price to fertilizer price ratio on inputs such as phosphate is now the highest on record, and as corn prices continue to slide, it’s creating financial hurt on farmers. . . . An unnamed farmer asked U.S. Farm Report, 'How are we going to survive at these prices?'" 

After severe storms damaged crops and farming equipment across Nebraska, the state used drones to help mitigate the aftermath. "Using drones to help with disaster response shows the role they now play in the state’s economy, after years of investment and research from the state government," reports Chris Teale of Route Fifty. "Officials in the state are looking at ways drones can be used, especially to help those in rural areas. Delivery of food, medical supplies and other resources is one use case receiving a lot of attention."

A Maine roadway.
(C. Banks photo)

Among all the states, Maine remains one of the most rural and wild. "Greater Portland, Lewiston, Auburn, Bangor, and other populous areas make up just a small slice of Maine’s pie," writes Chris Sedenka in his opinion for WBLM radio in Portland, Maine. "It’s fascinating just how much of the state remains truly remote and untouched. . . . We still have territories named T2R9, you’re not going to find that in every state. . . . According to the data, Maine’s rural population makes up 61.5% of the total. That is an absolutely huge number. . . .The majority of the state is basically just pine trees and wildlife."

Living a long life could partially depend on geography. Some counties just seem to support populations who keep on keeping on. 

The map above shows which U.S. counties have an overall life expectancy above 80 years.
(Map via Brilliant Maps)

New research shows rural Americans -- especially men -- have shorter lifespans than their urban counterparts

Rural living can be hardest on men. They can expect to
live two fewer years than urban men. (Adobe Stock photo)

Life in rural America is often idealized as a healthier, more authentic way to live, but the truth for many rural residents is that rural living can be hard enough to shorten life spans.

"Rural Americans – particularly men – are expected to live significantly shorter, less healthy lives than their urban counterparts," write Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, Bryan Tysinger and Jack Chapel for The Conversation. "According to our research, published in the Journal of Rural Health, a 60-year-old man living in a rural area is expected on average to live two fewer years than an urban man. For women, the rural-urban gap is six months."

Rural lifestyles may be plagued with harmful health habits and limited access to medical care. They write, "Rates of smoking, obesity, and chronic conditions are worse among rural populations. These conditions are condemning millions to disability and shortened lives." The steady decline of rural health care facilities and providers has compounded rural health problems, especially for residents with chronic conditions who require consistent care.

"We describe the conditions that drive our results as 'diseases of despair,' building off the now widely used term 'deaths of despair,'" the researchers explain. "But the conditions we study, such as heart disease, could similarly be influenced by social and economic prospects. And they can profoundly reduce quality of life."

Education level was also a determining factor in predicting life expectancy. They add, "We found that if rural education levels were as high as in urban areas, this would eliminate almost half of the rural-urban life-expectancy gap. Our data shows 65% of urban 60-year-olds were educated beyond high school, compared with 53% of rural residents the same age."

The land holds more than food; it contains medical breakthroughs and new medicines

"The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all." --- Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America, 1977

The Scoop chart

The land Berry is talking about does more than bind us together, it contains gifts that stretch beyond food. Seventy-five years ago, in Sanborn Field soil plot #23 in Columbia, Missouri, the soil yielded an incredible medical breakthrough, reports Tyne Morgan of The Scoop. Before this discovery, physicians used penicillin alongside other antibiotics with mixed results. In the 1940s, scientists pushed to find more effective and non-toxic microorganisms for people or animals.

Dr. Tim Reinbott, the director of Sanborn Field at the University of Missouri, told Morgan: "Seventy-five years ago, we had known about penicillin and other types of antibiotics, but they were only about 40% effective. . . . [Scientists]were looking for that golden antibiotic, that one that would really be very effective and be taken orally, not by injection. . . . Benjamin Duggar was working for Lederle Laboratories at the time, and he knew the director of Sanborn Field, who was William J. Albrecht, who was the soil microbiologist. Duggar asked him for some soil samples from Sanborn Field so that he could begin to culture for these microorganisms."

Duggar's soil samples "contained a golden mold that suppressed the growth of many microorganisms, including streptococci, a bacteria that causes various types of infections," Morgan writes. "From the sample, researchers eventually created aureomycin, which proved to be an antibiotic effective against 90% of bacteria-caused infections in humans." Bob Kremer, adjunct professor of soil microbiology at the University of Missouri, told Morgan, "One of the interesting facts that is often overlooked is that in any soil, you will find antibiotics, because it's just the nature of how these bacteria survive in nature."

The Food and Drug Administration approved aureomycin for human illness in 1948, and "Reinbott says for the first 30 to 40 years after the discovery of aureomycin, it was the go-to antibiotic for human medicine, but it also grew in popularity within animal medicine," Morgan reports. 

"To celebrate the discovery of aureomycin, a soil sample from Plot 23 was sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where it still resides today," Morgan writes. "The discovery at Sanborn Field wasn't just a breakthrough for human medical science, it was also a breakthrough for livestock. . . . aureomycin is still widely used in cattle today. Such an antibiotic discovery is estimated to cost $1.5 billion in 2023."

Standing at Sanborn Field, Reinbott told Morgan: "We've more aureomycin discoveries out here -- we've just got to look for them. It may or may not be an antibiotic, but it can be something just as groundbreaking, and that's what gets me excited."

Loneliness has increased across the U.S.; it shortens life expectancy, but there are solutions

Loneliness can lead to premature death.
(Photo by Andre Frueh, Unsplash)

Loneliness is a feeling as old as time, but it can lead to poor brain health and shorter life expectancy. According to America's top public health official, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, loneliness is "as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and more lethal than consuming six alcoholic drinks a day," opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof writes for The New York Times as part of a series titled "How America Heals," aimed at finding ways to fix this problem.

Chronic loneliness cuts deeper than sadness; researchers have linked it to strokes, heart disease, dementia, inflammation and suicide. Kristof writes, "It's also more dangerous than physical inactivity, obesity and air pollution, Murthy says. . . . It breaks the heart literally as well as figuratively." The physical and societal problems that result from loneliness are so harmful Murthy issued a rare advisory in May with a framework to rebuild social connection and community in the United States.

Research also shows Americans have been growing lonelier. A majority of adults (58%) report experiencing loneliness, according to a Morning Consult survey commissioned by The Cigna Group, a health insurance company. Why did loneliness increase? Kristof says the trends toward larger homes and longer working hours have left less time to share meals, and he notes studies that show social media has led to people being more lonely. Pets and talking robots have been suggested as solutions, he writes, but "It seems that there's something to be said for friends who are living, breathing human beings."

Kristof writes that there are ways to build connections that bind us together, including some approaches taken in the United Kingdom, which he says "is the pioneer of these efforts, having established the post of minister for loneliness in 2018. Britain oversees public-private partnerships that collectively knit millions of people together with programs like nature walks, songwriting workshops and community litter pickups.

"That's because if the researchers are correct, social isolation probably kills far more people in the West each year than terrorists and murderers, and it costs the public enormous sums in unnecessary health costs," Kristof writes. "Countermeasures can make a huge difference: One review of 148 studies concluded that social connections increase the odds of an individual's surviving over roughly the next seven years by about 50 percent."

Surgeon General Murthy offered a strategy to address loneliness that begins with building infrastructure that enables social connection: physical infrastructure such as parks and libraries, and social infrastructure to weave together volunteers or enthusiasts with similar interests. Britain can serve as a model for this, Kristof writes. He cites a town that has trained more than 1,100 volunteers to be "community connectors" who engage people and encourage them to join events or participate in programs. "Solutions to loneliness are like that — little nudges to encourage us to mingle the way we evolved."

Pandemic roundup: In-depth portrait of an Appalachian hospital; U.S. sees biggest drop in life expectancy in developed countries; vaccine mandates cut hospital staffs

A TV meteorologist of 33 years in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was fired after refusing to take a coronavirus vaccine. Read more here.

The Daily Yonder has an in-depth profile of how the surge in Covid patients is hammering the hospital in Morehead, Kentucky. Read more here.

What it's like working for Walmart, the nation's top rural employer, in a pandemic. Read more here.

The pandemic has caused one of the biggest global drops in life expectancy since World War II. A study of 29 developed countries revealed that Americans saw the largest drop, especially in men and people of color. The advanced nations that didn't see a drop (Denmark and Norway) both have comprehensive, universal health-care systems and implemented widespread, early "non-pharmaceutical interventions" with high compliance, such as social distancing and masking. Read more here.

Though 99% of its employees complied, North Carolina hospital system Novant Health fired about 175 people for not getting vaccinated. The company has 15 hospitals and 800 clinics, some in rural areas. Last week, 375 workers were suspended and given five days to comply. Nearly 200, including some who had been approved for exemptions, got their first dose by Friday and were reinstated. Novant's compliance numbers jibe with recent data that suggests employees who say they'll quit rather than get vaccinated aren't likely to follow through. However, dozens of state troopers in Massachusetts quit following a vaccine mandate, and hundreds of New York health-care workers have been suspended after its vaccine mandate went into effect. And meanwhile, leaders in a rural Colorado county are asking the governor for an exception to the vaccine mandate because too many health-care workers are quitting, worsening workforce shortages. Without local control of the vaccine mandate, they say many health-care facilities won't be able to stay open.

Seniors live longer these days, but not as long in rural areas, and their lifespans lag many other developed nations

Life expectancy for seniors at age 65 increased across the board from 2000 to 2016, but not nearly as much in rural areas, according to a newly published data analysis.

Urban and coastal seniors survive much longer than seniors in rural areas and the nation's interior—especially areas like Appalachia and the East South Central states (Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi). The geographic gap emerged around 1999 or 2000 and has been widening since 2000, Judith Graham reports for Kaiser Health News.

University of Pennsylvania demographer Samuel Preston spotted the trend using data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics. The longest-living seniors tend to be found in metro areas on the Pacific coast, and the ones with the shortest lifespans live in the rural East South Central states; the life expectancy gap between those two regions was nearly four years.

Men and women had differing life expectancies, according to co-author Yana Vierboom, a researcher at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research; by 2016, "life expectancy at age 65 for women in large metropolitan areas was 1.63 years longer than for those in rural areas. For men, the gap was 1.42 years," Graham reports. "Disparities were also highlighted when researchers examined life expectancy at 65 in the U.S. and 16 other developed nations, using 2016 data. Overall, the U.S. was near the bottom of the pack: American men ranked 11th while American women were in 13th place, behind leaders such as Japan, Switzerland, Australia, France, Spain and Canada."

Preston's study identified a reduction in deaths from cardiovascular illnesses like strokes or heart attacks as the biggest reason Americans are living longer. Such illnesses are the number one cause of death in the United States. Preston speculated that rural seniors might be more apt to die from heart attack or stroke because of lack of medical access, and said smoking rates likely had an impact, too. The study did not consider race, income, or education, which probably play a role, Graham reports.

The bad news about rural America, and ways to deal with it

Illustration by Sarah Grillo, Axios (cropped vertically from original)

The online news service Axios specializes in smart, short reads of 300 to 600 words, pretty much the range for typical post on The Rural Blog, so we're running verbatim a 583-word piece headlined "The rural America death spiral," with our commentary below. We invite you to post your own comments, by clicking on the comment link at the bottom.

By Stef W. Kight and Juliet Bartz

Many of the nation's current pathologies are taking a heavy toll on the majority-white population living in rural America, which was severely impacted by the opioid crisis and has dealt with falling populations, job losses and rising suicide rates.

Why it matters: The malaise and discontent that President Trump has tapped into goes beyond the racism we've seen over the past few weeks and includes anger at a changing world and frustration at dwindling opportunities close to home. These trends are further entrenching the rural-urban schism that came to light in the 2016 election.

The big picture: Political and economic power is shifting to the cities, and 20 percent of the population — 46 million people — is being left behind in the middle of America. These communities face increasingly difficult barriers to education, wealth and health. And if you're African American or Hispanic, your chances of success and survival at every turn are even worse.

Let’s say you were born, grew up and now reside in rural America. Throughout your life, you have been more susceptible to poverty, lower education, illness and even death than your urban counterparts. As a kid, chances are, you lived farther away from a doctor or hospital and got less exercise. You were more likely to live in a school desert — having to travel long distances to make it to school, if you were able to attend at all. Your school might have shuttered, as school consolidation has become more common in many rural areas, per The New York Times.

You had a greater likelihood of getting your high school diploma than the national average, but were far less likely to go straight to college than your urban and suburban counterparts, as The Atlantic reported. If you did graduate with a college degree, you'd likely end up so saddled with student debt that returning to your rural hometown wouldn't be an option if you hoped to get a job that would enable you to pay it off, according to research by the Federal Reserve. Even if you stay, some of the brightest people you grew up with would leave, contributing to the rural "brain drain."

As an adult, you’re more likely suffer from obesity, mental health issues, diabetes, cancer and opioid addiction. You are more likely to know people who took their own lives. If you keep working in your hometown, your job is more likely to be taken over by artificial intelligence, according to a study by the Brookings Institution — especially if you live in Indiana, Kentucky, South Dakota, Arkansas or Iowa. Your community's economy still hasn't fully recovered from the 2008 recession, according to Fed data.

As you get older, you are more likely to die from a preventable death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you do make it into old age, you may not have a place to grow old near your friends, family and the place you called home your whole life.

What's next: Technological advancements such as 5G and automated vehicles won't directly make life harder for rural America, but instead will fuel inequality by making life that much easier for urban America. The rural-urban divide will continue to play a central role in politics and elections for the next several years — unless and until rural America's population declines enough that its political power dwindles.

The bottom line: States, municipalities and the federal government have spent billions to draw jobs and prosperity to stagnant rural areas. But not much has changed.

COMMENT: One of our wiser advisers at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, the late Dr. Gil Friedell, liked to say, "If there's a problem in the community, the solution is probably in the community." In other words, governments and philanthropies can help, but communities must leverage their own assets to create progress. Rural communities have much in common, but each one is a distinct place, with its own potential solutions. We try to provide information that helps rural communities deal with their problems; or, as our mission statement puts it, "help rural journalists define the public agenda in their communities."

Articles like the one above tell troubling truths, but there are other truths. We need to remind our urban cousins that rural America is where the nation gets its food, its fiber and most of its water; it’s where Americans find recreation and relief from the urban environment, many of them in second homes. But the value of rural America to the nation is more than just economic. Most Americans have some rural heritage, and elements of rural culture still run through our lives. Its values of neighborliness and self-reliance – which are complimentary, not conflicting – are too often forgotten in urban America. We need to point out and exalt the good things about rural America and not let it be reduced to stereotypes. –Al Cross, director and professor, IRJCI, University of Kentucky

How long are people in your local area likely to live? A huge new database has the details, by census tract

How long is someone expected to live who was born in your neighborhood between 2010 and 2015? A huge new database has the answer, unless you live in Maine or Wisconsin (the data is not yet available for those states). The United States Small-Area Life Expectancy Estimates Project, released today, is a joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems.

USALEEP shows data by census tracts, which average about 4,000 people, and shows that life expectancy can vary widely across short distances. View the methodology and raw data files here, and view the interactive tool here.