Senate Republicans' relief bill has no special help for ethanol, unlike House bill; could have political repercussions

The petroleum and ethanol industries, long at odds with each other, are both hurting from decreased energy demand during the pandemic, but ethanol producers—and some rural voters in ethanol states—may be feeling left out in the cold by the Trump administration and Senate Republicans.

The Environmental Protection Agency "has surpassed the deadline by one month to release proposed 2021 renewable volume obligations in the Renewable Fuel Standard, an important market driver for biofuels," Todd Neeley reports for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. "And while congressional leaders continue to hammer out details on a new round of covid-19 stimulus that may include relief for ethanol producers this time, President Donald Trump was in west Texas on Wednesday touting the oil industry on a fundraising stop."

Though Senate Republicans' $1 trillion pandemic relief bill has $20.5 billion in broad funding to the Department of Agriculture, none is specifically earmarked for the ethanol industry. In contrast, the House relief bill authorizes $33 billion in agricultural spending, and "would establish the Renewable Fuel Reimbursement Program," Neeley reports. "It would provide a 45-cent per-gallon payment for feedstock purchases made by biofuels producers from Jan. 1, 2020, through May 1, 2020."

Former Iowa lieutenant governor Patty Judge, a Democrat, wrote for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids that the biofuel industry's swoon and Trump's trade war are why Trump is winning rural voters by only 9 points, when Trump carried that voting bloc by nearly 30 points in 2016. In Iowa, a Des Moines Register poll taken June 7-10 showed Trump leading Joe Biden by 1 point.

Free online course aims to help farmers and and their neighbors recognize signs of stress and suicide risk

A free online course aims to help rural farmers and those in farming communities learn how to recognize the signs of stress and suicide risk, communicate effectively with stressed farmers, and help reduce the stigma attached to mental health issues. The course is timely, because suicide and mental illness are higher for farmers, especially during the pandemic.

Rural Resilience: Farm Stress Training takes less than three hours to complete, but you can go at your own pace. It has slide presentations and downloadable resources, and is available through June 2021.

The course was funded by the Cooperative Extension Service, Farm Credit, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union. Course content was created by Extension experts at Michigan State University, the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin, Montana State University, and South Dakota State University.

Here are some other farmer suicide prevention and mental-health resources:

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 (24 hours)
• Crisis Text Line: 741-741 (24 hours)
• Farm Aid farmer hotline: 1-800-327-6243 (Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Eastern)
• National Farmers Union Farm Crisis Center
• Suicide warning signs: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Poultry workers' unions sue USDA over line speed waivers

"The union representing workers at chicken processing plants in six states sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday, saying its policy of allowing companies to slaughter birds more quickly endangers workers and makes it more difficult to protect against spread of the coronavirus," David Pitt reports for The Associated Press. "The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and local unions representing 10 plants in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Missouri joined with nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen to file the lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture allowed plants to waive line speed caps in 2018, after it said the issue had been studied via pilot programs for 25 years. However, "the unions said in court documents that an average of eight workers per year died on the job between 2013 and 2017 in poultry processing plants, and that workers commonly suffer sprains, lacerations, and contusions," Pitt reports. "They contend that research and worker experience shows work speed is a major contributing factor to the high injury rates suffered by poultry workers."

Senate Democrats introduced a bill on Tuesday that would block faster line speeds at meatpacking plants during the pandemic and suspend line-speed waivers already issued, Chuck Abbott reports for Successful Farming.

USDA website feature aims to help farmers more easily hire H-2A workers

An update to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farmers.gov website is meant to help farmers more easily hire immigrant workers with H-2A visas, according to a press release.

The new updates on the website include:

• A real-time dashboard that enables farmers to track the status of their eligible employer application and visa applications for temporary nonimmigrant workers
• Streamlined login information so farmers can save and track multiple applications quickly 
• Easier access to the Department of Labor’s Foreign Labor Application Gateway
• Allows farmers to track time-sensitive actions taken in the course of Office of Foreign Labor Certification’s adjudication of temporary labor certification applications
• Allows farmers to access all application forms on-line

New toolkit aims to help rural areas better access infrastructure grants

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced this week an initiative aimed at helping rural communities get more grant money for infrastructure projects. The Rural Opportunities to Use Transportation for Economic Success (ROUTES) initiative includes an online toolkit to help more easily find and complete applications for infrastructure project grants.

"While only 19 percent of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, 45% of all roadway fatalities and 34% of all public highway-rail grade crossing fatalities occur on rural roads, and the fatality rate on rural roads is two times higher than on urban roads," Rhonda Brooks reports for Farm Journal's Ag Professional.

Tight budgets, lack of summer programs leave more kids eating poorly in W.Va., new nonprofit newsroom reports

In West Virginia, tight budgets and lack of summer programs have left more children eating poorly. The state's "plan to feed out-of-work families relies on the state's cash-strapped nonprofits to fill in gaps in the system, including food distribution sites only accessible by vehicle and a two-hour pickup window in the middle of one workday for a week's worth of food," Amelia Ferrell Knisely reports for Mountain State Spotlight, the new investigative news nonprofit co-founded by award-winning reporter Ken Ward Jr. and affiliated with ProPublica. The story is the organization's first; it planned to start later this summer, but an editor wrote, "We found a story that couldn't wait."

The story comes on the heels of a recent Brookings Institution report that food insecurity is up, and that about 14 million children in the U.S. are eating less these days. According to Save the Children, one in five children in West Virginia are food insecure, Knisely reports.

"When Gov. Jim Justice mandated that schools close in March, schools and nonprofits jumped into action to make sure food was available to kids," Knisely reports. "School lots turned into drive-in feeding sites, bus drivers dropped off meal boxes to kids hidden in hollers, and the National Guard assisted in food handouts. State officials said they served a million meals to students in one month. Then summer arrived, and the number of food sites shrank. School systems with tight budgets couldn’t sustain as many feeding programs or pay bus drivers to deliver meals to isolated communities. Many summer camps and in-person tutoring programs, which typically help feed kids in summer, never opened because of covid-19."

Justice has not directly designated any of the $1.25 billion the state was allocated in federal relief funding on any food efforts, but localities getting funds can use them for food relief, Knisely reports.

White House task force finds Indian Health Service needs big changes to better protect sexually abused children

"A White House task force called for broad changes at the U.S. Indian Health Service to protect children from abuse at the agency’s facilities, saying officials must redo earlier, insufficient attempts at fixes," Christopher Weaver reports for the PBS program "Frontline." "The task force was formed in spring 2019, after a joint investigation by The Wall Street Journal and "Frontline" revealed the agency had mishandled a pediatrician who sexually abused his patients on Native American reservations over the course of two decades."

The task force's report, released last week, confirmed many of the same conclusions and called for a wide range of changes to the agency that oversees health care for 2.6 million Native Americans. "It says the agency should reform the ways it recruits, vets and pays its medical providers. And it calls for the agency to replace child-protection policies and a staff training program it announced just last year in the wake of the Journal-Frontline reports," Weaver reports. The task force also "recommended the IHS standardize sex-abuse reporting policies across its entire network of hospitals and clinics, arrange yearly training conducted by federal law enforcement authorities on sex abuse for all employees, and centralize its efforts to screen new providers for problem backgrounds, an activity the IHS now allows local managers to conduct, among other things."

Rural Ga. hospital's closure highlights worries about the role such hospitals play in areas hit hard by the pandemic

A hospital in rural Georgia is shutting down, highlighting the financial struggles such hospitals face, even as they play a crucial role in areas hit hard by the covid-19 pandemic.

"Officials with Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center said in a statement that the coronavirus pandemic has only worsened financial difficulties the hospital has endured for years. The Cuthbert hospital is about an hour from Albany, and is set to close its doors in October," Jim Burress and Lily Oppenheimer report for NPR affiliate WABE. "Public health experts have stressed that these hospitals miles from major cities like Atlanta are especially critical for rural seniors, or poverty-stricken communities that don’t necessarily have reliable transportation. For some, it could just mean they will have to journey much further to get intensive care. For others, it will mean inadequate care, delays, and possibly no intensive care at all."

Rural southwest Georgia, which has a high proportion of African-American residents, has suffered some of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the state. That's particularly concerning because rural African Americans who develop covid-19 are at a higher risk of serious hospitalization or death.

Jimmy Lewis, CEO of rural Georgia hospital collaborative Hometown Health, told WABE that one reason rural hospitals struggle is their communities' smaller tax base, limiting local funding. 

"That means that the sustainability under normal circumstances is tough," Lewis told WABE. But when a pandemic is added to the mix, "the surge introduces major external forces and costs that typically the small hospital is not prepared to withstand. It tries to find people to staff, it tries to find cash to supply personal protective equipment. All things considered, it becomes the intersection of all bad things."

The Senate's newly proposed $1 trillion Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection & Schools Act "allocates US $25 billion to the Provider Relief Fund, which is far short of the nearly US $100 billion provider associations like the American Hospital Association, American Medical Association and American Nurses Association have called for," The National Law Review reports.

New coronavirus infections increased in rural counties July 18-25, declined in metro counties; see county-level data

Covid-19 red zones July 18-25. Daily Yonder map; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive map.

"The surge in new covid-19 cases moved deeper into rural America last week, with the number of nonmetropolitan counties in the pandemic’s 'red zone' climbing from 630 to 734 from July 18 to July 25," Tim Murphy and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. "Red zone counties are those where the rate of new covid-19 cases exceeds 100 per 100,000 residents [a thousand per million] during a one-week period." The definition in a leaked White House report listing places that should impose restrictions because of high infection rates. The leaked report was issued July 14 and published July 16 by the Center for Public Integrity.

The number of new cases increased in nonmetropolitan counties from July 18 to 25, while new cases declined in metro areas. Nearly half of all rural counties had higher rates of new cases July 18-25 than in the preceding week, especially in the South, Murphy and Marema report. Rural counties in the Midwest and Intermountain West with higher infection rates tend to have meatpacking plants, prisons, and/or a higher proportion of Native Americans. 

Gas flaring from oil extraction up 23% from 2018 to 2019 in U.S.; some states are taking steps to regulate it more

"Gas flaring in the United States increased 23 percent last year, contributing to global levels of the practice that have not been 'seen in more than a decade,' according to a new report," Carlos Anchondo reports for Energy & Environment News. The analysis by the World Bank says the U.S. "flared the third-largest amount of gas in the world from 2018 to 2019, following Russia and Iraq. Globally, the volume of gas flaring — in which surplus gas is burned off into the air — increased 3%, rising from 145 billion to 150 billion cubic meters."

That matters because flared gas contains methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Methane is the main volatile hydrocarbon in natural gas; flaring burns most of it, but some can escape, and one product of the burning is carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

Flaring intensity, the amount of gas flared per unit of oil produced, also increased nearly 12% in the U.S. from 2018 to 2019, but dropped by 10% in the first quarter of 2020 despite increased oil production, Anchondo reports. That's because of improved utilization of flared gas, the report says.

Some states are taking steps to regulate flaring, including major Permian Basin drilling states New Mexico and Texas, Anchondo reports.

Rural homelessness could go up once federal pandemic measures expire; study ranks states by risk

"With federal unemployment benefits ending soon and moratoriums on evictions soon to follow, social services organizations are bracing for a homelessness crisis to hit rural Americans," Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder. "The agencies and churches that would normally help are already stretched thin by the pandemic, says one nonprofit administrator."

Nationwide, around 20 million renters are at risk of eviction once the expanded unemployment insurance expires, according to a study from the Covid-19 Eviction Defense Project, an organization founded in March to study the looming problem and suggest solutions. According to their research, "mass evictions would be a disaster," The Aspen Institute reports. "For both individuals and families, evictions result in severe harm; when they become widespread, there are also significant consequences for entire communities and even the speed of economic recovery."

In more than a dozen states, governors halted evictions, but federal guidelines in the CARES Act lift some eviction moratoria on Aug. 24, and that could increase pressure on renters. In Kentucky, which has a moratorium, landlords are still trying to evict tenants who can't pay rent, sending them threatening texts, letters, or even disconnecting utilities, according to Adrienne Bush, executive director for the Homeless and Housing Coalition of Kentucky. Landlords have filed suit against the moratorium and Gov. Andy Beshear's administration is in mediation with them on the issue.

Analysis with lots of visual aids: Rural America needs more help to fight economic and health problems of pandemic

New covid-19 infections have shifted increasingly to rural areas, leading some local and state governments to re-impose businesses restrictions. But without more federal aid, many rural areas will have a much harder time recovering from a second shutdown, and that could help trigger a "prolonged, deep recession," senior economist Olugbenga Ajilore writes for the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

Many studies say the pandemic could cause extra harm to rural areas' economies and health, since they tend to have older and sicker residents, poorer infrastructure, and less access to health care. Local governments are likely to suffer disproportionately, since many are still recovering from the Great Recession and don't have the tax base many larger communities have — especially in areas with high minority populations. "State and local governments have been hit on both ends of their budgets by the increased costs of fighting the coronavirus and the decreased revenue resulting from lower individual and business incomes and a drop in retail sales," Ajilore reports.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act gave $1,200 direct payments to households in April and expanded unemployment insurance, and that boosted spending and business revenues, especially in Southern rural communities. But though the percentage of small businesses that were open rose in May and early June, the number tanked by the end of June along with small-business revenues. That trend coincided with the rural spike in covid-19 cases, Ajilore reports.

"In order to get the United States on the trajectory for economic recovery, policymakers need to ensure that states have adequate testing capacity and contact tracing programs in place in order to bring transmission of the virus down to a controllable level," Ajilore writes. "Policymakers also need to provide substantial relief to state and local governments. Finally, policymakers need to extend unemployment insurance and deliver relief to households in the form of direct checks for as long as this public health crisis lasts."

Ajilore provides a treasure trove of maps, charts and graphs illustrating health and economic trends in rural America over the course of the pandemic.

Three meatpacking workers sue OSHA, accuse government of not protecting essential workers from coronavirus

"Frustrated by the lack of response to their complaint of the 'imminent danger' posed by covid-19," three workers at the Maid-Rite Specialty Foods plant near Scranton, Pa., filed suit against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, Bernice Yeung and Michael Grabell report for ProPublica. The suit "accuses the government of failing to protect essential workers from dangerous conditions that could expose them to the coronavirus. It relies on a rarely used provision of the Occupational Safety and Health Act that allows workers to sue the secretary of labor for 'arbitrarily or capriciously' failing to counteract imminent dangers."

The three workers worked with Pennsylvania labor organization Justice at Work to help them file an anonymous complaint with OSHA May 19, saying they had only been given masks three times, and there was no social distancing on the production line or in restrooms where washed their hands, Yeung and Grabell report. Meatpacking plants have been infection hotbeds during the pandemic.

According to the lawsuit, two of the workers who filed suit have contracted covid-19, though ProPublica was not able to verify whether anyone at Maid-Rite has been infected, Yeung and Grabell report. An anonymous complaint to OSHA in April alleged that about half of the plant was out sick, and that the plant was simply hiring more people and not taking prevention or containment measures.

The lawsuit says the workers were filing suit because they could no longer wait for OSHA to act, and "argues that OSHA’s failure to respond effectively to workers’ covid-19 concerns is part of a larger pattern," Yeung and Grabell report.

A Labor Department spokesperson declined to comment to ProPublica, but wrote in an email that OSHA opened an inspection at Maid-Rite on June 2, has six months to complete it, and no further details will be made public until the inspection is complete, the spokesperson wrote.

"ProPublica has previously reported that despite receiving thousands of complaints, OSHA has not prioritized essential workers like meatpackers in its covid-19 enforcement efforts," Yeung and Grabell report. "Public health departments across the country have found themselves overwhelmed by the flood of cases linked to the meat industry, which has sometimes stymied the efforts of local officials to curb the spread of the virus."

Farm and meatpacking workers at high risk for covid-19, says documentary that will follow up with online talk Thur.

Rural counties with many farmworkers are likely to have higher death rates from covid-19, according to a study from the University of California, San Diego. Those most at risk in such counties are those who don't speak English, farmworkers, and those living in poverty. That puts migrant farmworkers in the bullseye, Rosa Tuirán and Nick Roberts report for the PBS program "Frontline."

Though the Trump administration declared farm laborers as essential workers, there hasn't been much federal guidance on how to keep them from getting sick, leaving states and employers to figure it out. "The federal Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration has issued workplace guidance to protect employees from covid-19, including encouraging employees to stay home if they’re sick, promoting frequent hand washing, and implementing regular sanitation procedures. None of the guidance is mandatory," Tuirán and Roberts report. OSHA declined to speak with the journalists, but said in a statement that the voluntary guidelines were enough to protect workers from covid-19. However, covid-19 cases have been spiking among farmworkers and meatpacking workers.

The workers, who often live in crowded housing, say they work sick because they need the money; one said he was not told that he would still get paid if he went into quarantine. His employer didn't respond to multiple requests for interviews, but "a company update said it is following local, state and federal guidance to stem the spread of the virus, and that its worksites have always had gloves and hand washing stations available," Tuirán and Roberts report. Many workers who work for other agri-businesses reported that they were not given masks.

For more information about the pandemic's impact on farmworkers and PBS's work to uncover it, "Frontline" has a documentary called "Covid's Hidden Toll," and a podcast discussion about what the documentary reveals about the dangers to workers on farms and at meatpacking plants. On Thursday at 6:30 p.m. ET, the filmmakers will have an online discussion; click here for more information.

New nonprofit argues that Trump has hurt rural America

Chris Gibbs

A new political non-profit launched Monday, Rural 2020, plans to advertise in battleground states to advocate policies it believes will benefit agriculture and rural Americans, and attempt to convince voters that the Trump administration has hurt rural America. It plans to build community coalitions in battleground states, and has a radio ad.

Chris Gibbs, an Ohio soybean farmer and former official of the Farm Service Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, founded the organization and chairs it. Gibbs says he is a former Trump voter and former Republican who unsuccessfully ran as an independent against Rep. Jim Jordan, a Trump acolyte. "I knew we were in trouble when the president said trade wars are good and easy to win," Gibbs said in a statement. "Lost trade opportunities, dwindling health-care providers, rural hospital closures, below cost of production prices for commodities and livestock, collapse of the biofuel market, bankruptcies, and suicides all plagued rural America well before covid-19. The uncoordinated response of the Trump administration to the pandemic has upended traditional food supply chains and only made things worse for our dairy, livestock, and fresh produce farmers."

National parks getting trashed during pandemic

A volunteer scrubs graffiti off a rock in the Santa Paul Canyon in Ventura County, Calif. (Time photo by Ellie Mora)

Many U.S. national and state parks are getting trashed during the pandemic. "Many of these spaces, supposed to be untouched swaths of time-proof wilderness, have been overrun by first-time visitors seeking refuge from quarantine, joblessness, or the inability to take far-flung vacations," Andrew Chow reports for Time magazine. "And as people have flooded into the parks, new crises have arisen for rangers and nearby communities, including indigenous populations who were already particularly susceptible to the virus."

Some parks shut down briefly during March and April, but they began re-opening later, many with timed entry restrictions designed to keep people spread out, Chow reports. But that doesn't work to keep people from sneaking in before the rangers arrive in the morning or stop people from congregating at popular lookout points. The restrictions can also encourage park visitors to attempt to enter the park elsewhere—sometimes through Native American reservations that are disproportionately hit by the pandemic and trying to keep visitors away.

"In interviews, rangers at Big Bend National Park in Texas, Great Falls Park in Maryland, and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah and Arizona said they have all seen increases in visitation following covid-19, particularly from first-timers," Chow reports. RV and camper sales have surged; so have campground reservations across the country. With travelers still leery of airplanes, and most indoor entertainment options closed, many families seem to be embracing a relatively cheap getaway option where the risk of catching the virus is much lower than it is indoors."

But the new visitors, many of whom are new to visiting the parks, are polluting the parks with urine and feces and spraying graffiti on rocks, Chow reports.

Study: Rural residents with disabilities less likely to trust news, follow health advice on pandemic than urban peers

Trust in information about covid-19 by metro status of county. (University of Montana chart; click the image to enlarge it)

Rural Americans with underlying health conditions are at a higher risk of catching covid-19 than their urban counterparts but are less likely to trust reliable information sources and less likely to follow public health recommendations for the pandemic, according to a study from the University of Montana's Research and Training Center on Disability in Rural Communities.

Rural respondents reported lower rates of all practices recommended to lower the spread of covid-19, including handwashing, avoiding crowds, social distancing, and avoiding at-risk individuals.

The sources respondents trusted for health information tended to make the biggest difference in their attitudes. Rural residents were less trusting of any covid-19 information across the board, with one exception: though President Trump was the least-trusted of any information source among all areas, rural residents reported the highest relative level of trust in him. Rural residents also tended to place little trust in the news media, whether local or national news.

A Bloomberg story out of Texas illustrates the disdain many rural residents feel for warnings about the pandemic, where "the disease is seen as more threatening to personal freedoms than personal health," Thomas Black reports. "I'm not worried about it," retired truck driver Jeff Donaldson told Black. "It's all just about the politics."

The state's Republican governor, Greg Abbott, initially resisted strong measures to combat the disease, but he's now advocating for such measures as infection rates rise in Texas. Rural residents told Black the contradictory advice from public officials was one reason they wouldn't wear a mask.

Tuesday virtual town hall with bipartisan former USDA secretaries to talk economic challenges in rural America

On Tuesday, July 28, at 3 p.m. ET, a virtual town hall will discuss the challenges and opportunities facing rural America in a crisis economy. Two former agriculture secretaries, Republican Ann Veneman and Democrat Tom Vilsack, will discuss the issues using examples from 9/11 and the Great Recession. "Rural America: Leadership in a Crisis Economy" will be moderated by Kirk Siegler, a National Public Radio reporter who covers rural issues.

The town hall will be presented by the National Association of Counties, the National Cooperative Business Association, and the Rural Community Assistance Partnership. NACo aims to connect and serve county governments. The NCBA is a membership organization for cooperatives. The RCAP is a national network of non-profit organizations that provide technical assistance and resources to rural communities. All three lobby lawmakers at the federal level.

Click here to join the town hall and share your views via chat.

Senate Republicans' relief bill includes more help for agriculture and rural areas

"A $1 trillion coronavirus relief package that Senate Republicans are trying to finalize would authorize compensation to livestock and poultry producers and also aid ethanol plants as well as additional direct payments to farmers, a key senator said Thursday," Philip Brasher reports for Agri-Pulse.

"The Senate package is expected to include $20 billion in direct appropriations for farmers and ranchers, on top of the $14 billion in new borrowing authority through the Commodity Credit Corporation that the Agriculture Department could tap to keep sending stimulus checks to producers," Ryan McCrimmon reports for Politico's Weekly Agriculture.

The bill includes "a five-year telehealth extension for Federally Qualified Health Centers and Rural Health Clinics," Inside Health Policy reports.

Two-thirds of the bill's funding for elementary and secondary education "would be reserved for schools that plan to physically reopen and provide some kind of in-person instruction," reflecting a priority of President Trump, Education Week reports.

The "proposal will sit around $1 trillion and include $105 billion for schools, a second round of direct payments to individuals and families, $16 billion in new money for testing, a second, more targeted round of forgivable small business loans from the Paycheck Protection Program, a myriad of tax incentives for employers to rehire, retain and retrofit their offices for employees," Phil Mattingly reports for CNN. "It will also include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's redline: liability protections for businesses, schools, hospitals and non-profits."

Trump administration officials are pushing a series of narrower issue-by-issue bills in case the larger bill doesn't pass, Marianne Levine and Nolan McCaskill report for Politico.

Sinclair Broadcasting won't air discredited 'Plandemic' segment, after widespread outcry; thanks Fauci for his work

UPDATE, July 28: "Sinclair said that given the nature of Judy Mikovits’ claims to correspondent Eric Bolling, the segment was 'not appropriate, to air," The Associated Press reports. Sinclair said, “We also reiterate our appreciation for all that Dr. Fauci and his team have accomplished for the health and well-being of Americans and people worldwide.”

Following widespread public outcry, Sinclair Broadcasting is reconsidering plans to force local television stations it owns to broadcast an interview featuring a conspiracy theory video about the covid-19 pandemic, Aubree Eliza Weaver reports for Politico.

The video, "Plandemic," is about a discredited claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was to blame for the creation of the novel coronavirus.

"'America This Week' host Eric Bolling was scheduled to air an interview with Judy Mikovits, a medical researcher featured in the 'Plandemic' video," referring to Mikovits as "an expert in virology," Weaver reports.

After broad pushback, Sinclair says it will delay and rework the episode, and said they in no way endorsed "Plandemic" or its message. Sinclair, which owns stations in 81 TV markets, has a disproportionately rural audience.

Map shows which states are allowing in-person prison visits; database shows state-level impact of covid-19 in prisons

Map by The Marshall Project; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

Though prisons are a major vector for the novel coronavirus, some states are gradually easing restrictions on in-person visits from family and lawyers, according to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism outlet focused on criminal justice. The story includes an interactive map and detailed updates for where each state's corrections systems stand.

The Marshall Project, in partnership with The Associated Press, also maintains a frequently updated database showing how many people have been sickened and/or died from covid-19 in prisons, both nationwide and within each state.

It should be noted that most of this data concerns state and federal prisons only, and not local jails. However, six states have unified prison and jail systems (Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont) so in those cases, the data includes testing and case numbers from both pre-trial detainees and sentenced prisoners.

Survey details the heavy toll of covering the pandemic on many journalists' mental health

A small but in-depth survey highlights the emotional toll covering the pandemic has had on journalists all over the world, Meera Selva and Anthony Feinstein report for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

The study was led by Selva, director of the Journalist Fellowship Programme at the Reuters Institute, and Feinstein, a psychiatry professor at the University of Toronto, along with a team of researchers. Feinstein has done similar work on how journalists have been affected by covering other extreme events such as the 9/11 terror attacks and organized crime in Mexico. They sampled 73 experienced journalists at large news organizations, almost all of whom considered themselves to be in good physical health.

"The majority of our respondents, around 70 percent, suffer from some levels of psychological distress and responses suggest that 26 percent have clinically significant anxiety compatible with the diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder which includes symptoms of worry, feeling on edge, insomnia, poor concentration and fatigue," Selva and Feinstein report. "Around 11 percent of respondents report prominent symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which include recurrent intrusive thoughts and memories of a traumatic covid-19-related event, a desire to avoid recollections of the event, and feelings of guilt, fear, anger, horror and shame."

Though the sample is small and the results preliminary, "the top-line findings are so striking that we feel it is important to flag up the pressure many journalists are working under so that news media and others can consider how to respond to the problems we identify," Selva and Feinstein report.

They note that the emotional toll could be much worse for journalists who are less experienced, in worse physical health, and working for "less privileged" news organizations (such as rural papers). Read more here.

Study shows disparities that hurt rural children's health

Though rural living offers some benefits to health, such as increased community cohesion, many of the approximately 1 million infants and toddlers living in the rural U.S. face challenges that can hurt their health and stymie their development, Jessie Laurore, Gayane Baziyants, and Sarah Daily report for Child Trends.

The brief relies on national- and state-level data compiled by the State of Babies Yearbook 2020, which in turn gets its data from national data sets such as the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey and the National Survey of Children's Health. Click here for state-level data about race, poverty, family structure, rurality, and more for infants and toddlers in each state.

Some key takeaways from the Child Trends report:

• Rural ares have higher infant mortality and preterm birth rates.
• Low birth weight is a significant challenge in rural areas for some states, more so than in urban areas.
• Rural infants are less likely to be breastfed. 
• Rural mothers are less likely receive timely prenatal care and more likely to give birth outside of the hospital. 
• Rural infants and toddlers are less likely to receive preventative medical or dental care and less likely to receive recommended vaccines.
• Rural infants and toddlers in low-income families are less likely to have health insurance than their urban counterparts.

The report recommends that lawmakers identify any existing barriers that rural families may face in enrolling their children in their state's Children's Health Insurance Program. CHIP covers families that make too much to qualify for Medicaid but don't earn enough to afford private health insurance. Medicaid and CHIP, which cover more than one-third of children in the U.S., can help ensure more children in rural areas can access health care, but rural families are less likely to be enrolled in CHIP.

The report also advocates options like mobile health clinics and telemedicine to increase rural access to health care. It also recommends promoting timely vaccinations for rural children and finding ways to pay for it using existing programs.

They also recommend that states identify whether there are gaps in how existing in-home visiting support programs serve rural children and families and, if so, find ways to bridge that gap.

Finally, the report recommends that states work to increase rural prenatal care by working with community hospitals, doulas, birthing centers, and mobile health clinics.

Quick hits: Appalachian New Deal offered; rural homelessness could rise after federal pandemic aid runs out

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

A coalition of left-leaning environmental and economic policy groups have published an "Appalachian New Deal" meant to give federal lawmakers ideas on how to bring more jobs and clean energy to the region as they consider the next stimulus bill. Read more here.

Drillers are increasingly declaring bankruptcy and sticking taxpayers with the cleanup costs, while executives pocket millions and workers lose jobs. Read more here.

Will rural homelessness hit after benefits and eviction moratoriums end? Read more here.

Because rural physicians are older on average, they could be at an increased risk of severe outcomes if they catch covid-19. Read more here.

Halliburton looking beyond U.S. shale oil as fracking remains unprofitable

The pandemic has soured the outlook on the U.S. shale oil industry, but there's evidence it was running out of steam already, if energy giant Halliburton is any indication.

"Way back in January (it’s been a long year) Halliburton was already souring on shale. Way before the novel coronavirus put the final nail in the coffin of the West Texas shale revolution, the multinational corporation and one of the largest oil field service companies in the world had very publicly been going through a rough patch with shale oil," Haley Zaremba reports for Oil Price. "January 2020 marked the posting of Halliburon’s third straight quarterly loss during the national shale slump that also caused the corporation to take a $2.2 billion charge to its earnings. As a result of this massive shale slump, Halliburton laid off a whopping eight percent of its North American staff in the middle of last year, before dismissing even more employees in the Western U.S."

Bloomberg reported this week that Halliburton "is looking away from its traditional North American heartland for sales growth as the fracking behemoth works its way through an historic oil bust." Though U.S. shale was once a major income source for the company, Halliburton suggested to investors that it may limit or eliminate U.S. shale. That a company the size of Halliburton is moving away from U.S. shale entirely "could certainly be seen as a harbinger of doom," Zaremba reports.

Because U.S. shale prices have recovered somewhat, some other drillers are reopening and creating more wells, but that may not be enough to pay down the coming debt for companies that were only able to meet growing demand through heavy borrowing, Zaremba reports.

Register to join four rural editors next Thursday morning for a free webinar, 'Success Stories in Rural Journalism'

By Al Cross
Director and Professor, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

It’s a stressful time for our country, and especially for journalism. At the Institute, we think our best path forward is what we have always stood for: quality journalism, paid for by news outlets with a commitment to public service.

That is often difficult in rural journalism, but there are many good examples of success, and we’d like to share them with you – and start a discussion about how we can play a larger role in the sustainability of journalism.

Readers of The Rural Blog are invited to register for a Zoom webinar, “Success Stories in Rural Journalism,” to be held at 11 a.m. ET Thursday, July 30. It'll run about an hour. Our panelists will be:

• John Gregg, news editor of The Valley News in Lebanon, N.H., which far out-performed its sister papers in raising philanthropic money from its readers to make sure its quality journalism can continue.
• Laurie Brown of The Canadian Record in the Texas Panhandle, one of America’s greatest rural newspapers, whose quality work is recognized and rewarded by her readers, most of whom don’t agree with her philosophically;
• John Nelson, a former weekly and daily editor who is now executive editor of Landmark Community Newspapers, a 10-state group that puts a premium on the autonomy of local editors, managers and publishers, while expecting them to serve their communities;
• Jennifer P. Brown of The Hoptown Chronicle, a digital startup in Hopkinsville, Ky., where she was editor of the Kentucky New Era, a formerly independent daily that is now part of a chain. She’s the programming co-chair of the Institute’s national advisory board.

Laurie is a member of the Ezzell family that won our Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism, and Jennifer Brown and John Nelson and are winners of the Al Smith Award, which the Institute and the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists give to Kentuckians who render great public service through community journalism. We know they and John Gregg will offer much insight and inspiration, and we hope you will join us for a useful discussion.

The webinar is free, but registration is required. To register, click here.

Rural residents, worrying about pandemic, may be more hesitant than urbanites to go to hospitals

A hospital chain CEO in Georgia says he and other rural health care professionals are worried that rural residents are so concerned about the pandemic that they may not be seeking medical care when necessary, Ashton Packer reports for WGXA-TV in Macon, Georgia.

Jonathan Green, CEO of Taylor Healthcare Group, told Packer that hospitals stopped providing non-essential services in the early days of the pandemic to reduce the spread of the virus, but thinks that may have scared some into believing that hospitals were no longer a safe place to go for treatment.

Green also believes that rural residents may be less likely to seek treatment because many live at least half an hour from the nearest hospital. But fear of the coronavirus itself may be the main culprit, he told Packer: "I think the hesitation just came from the virus itself. Just the not knowing. Really, the unknown is what makes people hesitate. I think sometimes people are afraid to know if they have covid-19 or something else."

Juliette, Ga. (Wikipedia map)

In Juliette, an unincorporated community just north of Macon where the popular movie Fried Green Tomatoes was filmed, residents said they feel conflicted about whether to go to a hospital (the nearest one is about 20 minutes away). "I don’t have insurance, so I probably wouldn’t go," Juliette resident Angela Marlow told Packer. "And then if I did go, I wouldn’t believe the results, one way or the other. I just don’t believe in the numbers. I think they’re exaggerating the numbers. Everything is covid, covid, covid, regardless of whether or not it’s covid.”

Green stressed that his and other hospitals are observing masking, social distancing, and extra cleaning procedures to reduce the spread of the virus, and told Packer "The last thing we want is for you to come to the hospital and get sick."

Push to remove Confederate statues stalls in rural areas

Map and legend by The Washington Post, enhanced by The Rural Blog; for a larger version, click on the image.

In the wake of protests about racism and police brutality over the past few months, at least 63 Confederate statues nationwide have been taken down by protesters or removed by local officials, but that's mostly happened in liberal, urban areas. Rural communities are far less likely to push for their removal, according to an exclusive tally kept by The Associated Press. For instance, "North Carolina still has at least 69 monuments on public land. Of those, 56 are in counties that voted for President Donald Trump in 2016; 52 are in towns of fewer than 20,000," AP's Rebecca Santana and Jonathan Drew report.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 700 Confederate statues remain standing, many in the rural South, with the largest shares in Georgia and Virginia. The AP list shows that 2020 has been one of the busiest years yet for removal of such statues.

"Still, in a sign that the removal movement might be spreading, local governments in several less populous areas of Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina have recently approved removals but not yet taken down the monuments," Santana and Drew report.

Laws in some Southern states, counties and communities may make removing the monuments difficult, Bonnie Berkowitz and Adrian Blanco report for The Washington Post.

One-third of rural counties in 'red zone' for covid-19 cases, according to White House task force; see county-level data

New covid-19 cases from July 11-18. Daily Yonder map; click image to enlarge it or click here for interactive version.

"A third of all rural counties are in a 'red zone' for covid-19 cases, according to a definition devised by the White House Coronavirus Task Force," Bill Bishop reports for The Daily Yonder. "In a document prepared for the White House group, 'red zones' were defined as places that had 100 or more covid-19 cases per 100,000 people in the last week. The document was dated July 14 and found that 18 states met that definition."

The task force's state-level map jibes with the Yonder map, which shows new case rates for all U.S. counties from July 11-18, calculated using data from USA Facts.

Bishop notes that "urban America was in worse shape" over the past week, and that a higher proportion of urban counties were in the red zone this week: "Just over 41 percent of urban counties were in the 'red zone' compared to 32.2% of rural counties. Also, 12% of rural counties reported no new cases in the week we studied. Only 1.6% of urban counties reported zero cases during this week."

Map shows which states have adults at higher risk of serious illness with covid-19

Estimate of U.S. prevalence of adults aged 18 and over with any serious medical condition, as of 2018. (CDC map)

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a map showing which counties have populations with an increased risk of severe outcomes from covid-19. Many are rural, since rural populations tend to be older, more obese, and are more likely to have underlying medical conditions. Read more here: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6929a1-H.pdf

Child hunger up in U.S.; about 14 million kids eating less

With so many people losing their jobs, overall food insecurity has remained at record levels since the pandemic began. "Though food insecurity among households with children decreased from April to June, it is still far above its Great Recession peak," Lauren Bauer reports for Brookings. "In fact, new data show that an unprecedented number of children in the United States are experiencing food insecurity and did not have sufficient food as of late June."

According to U.S. Census Bureau polling data from late June, 16.5 percent of households with children said their children sometimes or often didn't eat enough within the past week befause they couldn't afford enough food. "These high rates of child food insecurity should not be confused with the even higher share of food insecure households with children (27.5 percent); these households may but do not necessarily have food insecure children because parents buffer children from deprivation if able," Bauer reports. "This means that last month, in about two-thirds of food insecure households with children, there was evidence of child food insecurity."

It's unclear how the pandemic has affected rural child hunger specifically. However, even before the pandemic, rural households were more likely to rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. In 2018, 85 of the 100 counties that relied most on SNAP were rural. It's not an exact metric for hunger, but suggests that hunger is disproportionately rural.

With future legality of dicamba in doubt, farmers struggle to make decisions as seed-buying season approaches

With the legality of the weed killer dicamba in question, many farmers are struggling to make decisions about next year as the fall seed-buying season approaches. Dicamba use in the U.S. is at or near a record high this year, with 60 million acres of dicamba-tolerant crops planted, but it's unclear what next year will look like, Emily Unglesbee reports for DTN/The Progressive Farmer.

A federal court recently banned sales of dicamba-based products in the U.S. until late in December, ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency didn't do due diligence when reauthorizing the herbicide in 2018. Reauthorization expires Dec. 20, and EPA is expected to try to reauthorize it then, if not sooner. EPA told farmers they could use existing stores of dicamba-based herbicides through July, and a federal appeals court upheld that call, but it's still unclear what legal footing dicamba will be on next year.

"The most pressing question facing farmers and the industry is whether two companies, BASF and Bayer, will be able to get new registrations approved for XtendiMax and Engenia, two over-the-top dicamba herbicides whose registrations were vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in early June," Unglesbee reports. "With no clear timeline from EPA on when it might make those decisions -- nor any information on what new labels would look like -- the Xtend cropping system is faced with uncertainty as farmers near the fall seed-buying season, with some opting to switch to other herbicide-tolerant platforms."

Many rural-focused charities step up in pandemic

"While the many efforts of funders in response to covid-19 have been deservedly recognized, the work of those responding to rural communities’ covid-19 crisis is less well known. Rural cases continue to grow at a quicker rate than urban cases do—and like in urban areas, the impacts are disproportionately on rural communities of color," Allen Smart reports in Health Affairs.

Smart recognizes rural-focused funders that have stepped up during the pandemic to help rural areas, highlighting organizations operating at the state and federal level. Click here to read some examples.

New toolkit aims to help rural communities develop (and journalists cover) paramedicine programs

A new toolkit from the Rural Health Information Hub aims to help rural communities develop community paramedicine and mobile health programs. Community paramedicine is a health-care delivery field in which paramedics and emergency medical technicians become certified to provide more in-depth services to patients, a great boon for patients far from hospitals.

The guide also serves to inform journalists who want to learn more about and cover such programs, especially since it discusses the unique challenges rural communities face in implementing them.

The Rural Community Paramedicine Toolkit compiles emerging practices and resources, highlighting successful existing programs. It also offers guidance on implementing, evaluating, disseminating and sustaining such programs. Click here for more information.

Rural hospitals struggling as pandemic hits them; federal aid may far outstrip relief from federal government

Small, rural hospitals are in the midst of a rocky year: earlier this year, when few had any covid-19 patients, hospitals that were already cash-strapped had to stop elective surgeries and other services that are their main money-makers. And now that the pandemic is hitting some rural communities, they're struggling to provide the supplies and staffing to deal with the influx of patients.

"Pandemic-related federal money has helped struggling rural hospitals stay afloat. But as Congress considers additional aid this month, advocates and policymakers would like to move beyond stopgap measures to change the hospitals’ long-term trajectory," April Simpson reports for Stateline. "As the pandemic persists, it’s unclear how long struggling rural hospitals can hang on."

The pandemic was hardly the beginning of rural hospitals' financial struggle. "Since 2010, 128 rural hospitals have closed, including a record 18 hospitals last year. Even more rural hospitals were on track to shut down this year until Congress in March approved $100 billion to health care providers in the CARES Act," Simpson reports. "The support included $10 billion in targeted funding that was allocated based on operating expenses before covid-19. Earlier this month, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced another $1 billion targeted to certain hospitals that serve rural populations." Some small rural hospitals also got aid from the Paycheck Protection Program and from a $150 million grant program meant to help hospitals with increased expenses related to the pandemic.

But hospitals' losses and needs may far outstrip federal relief. "The American Hospital Association estimates hospitals and health systems lost $202.6 billion between March and June and are projected to lose an additional $120.5 billion through the end of 2020. The slow recovery of inpatient and outpatient volumes adds to the strain," Simpson reports. "The association’s findings are based on an electronic survey representing 1,360 member hospitals across 48 states and Washington, D.C. Rural hospitals and health care systems represented about one-third of respondents."

Investigative reporters in N.D. uncover names of dozens of drillers who owe millions in royalties to state education fund

In a win for accountability reporting, investigative reporters in North Dakota were able to obtain the names of 34 oil and gas companies operating in the state that owe tens of millions of dollars in overdue gas royalty payments meant to help fund the state's public schools. 

"The names of the firms on the hook for old royalty payments have not been publicly released in the past, but the state Department of Trust Lands provided them following a request by Forum News Service," Jeremy Turley reports for Inforum, an online partnership between The Forum newspaper and TV station WDAY in Fargo. The companies include Continental Resources, "which is chaired by billionaire businessman Harold Hamm, was the state's top gas royalty payer in fiscal year 2020."

The exact amount of money owed is unclear because companies are responsible for looking through their records and calculating the amount. Also, the amount is increasing for many of the companies that are fighting overdue payments in court, racking up interest and penalties on the principle all the while., Turley reports.

"Once repaid, the money goes to the Common Schools Trust Fund, which supports public K-12 education in the state. The fund that also receives income from land leased to ranchers, a tobacco lawsuit settlement and earnings on investments provided nearly $367 million toward the state's school funding during the current two-year budget cycle," Turley reports. "The amount for schools was increased to $419 million for the next two-year cycle to soften any blows to state aid resulting from the coronavirus, low oil prices and overall economic downturns."

As Congress considers rural aid in next stimulus bill, survey shows how much 2019's wild weather hurt rural Nebraska

As Congress considers rural and agricultural aid for the next stimulus bill, a new survey illustrates how rural areas in the big farming state of Nebraska were already hurting before the pandemic, due to record wet weather in 2019. Parts of other Midwestern states suffered likewise.

According to the latest annual survey from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Department of Agricultural Economics, severe weather harmed more than half of Nebraska's rural communities in 2019.

"Last year, flood damage in the state was estimated at more than $1.3 billion, including $449 million in damage to roads, levees and other infrastructure. Twenty-seven bridges were damaged," The Grand Herald Independent reports. "Agricultural damages included $440 million in crop losses; and $400 million in cattle losses. Livestock losses included 700 hogs who drowned on a farm near Fremont."

State pandemic maps in Georgia disguise skyrocketing cases; watch out for similar manipulations in your state

Georgia Department of Public Health maps

Georgia's Department of Public Health was criticized in May for posting inaccurate or misleading data on coronavirus case counts, covid-19 death counts and other metrics critical to tracking the pandemic. But on Sunday someone in Atlanta with the Twitter handle "Georgia Person" tweeted that cases in the state jumped 49 percent in 15 days, but state-published maps disguised the surge.

First, he noted, the the maps' color key is all blue except for the very worst counties, which are red. That may suggest that they are the only ones in serious trouble. A graduated color scheme with shades all the same color would show the data more clearly, he and others in the discussion argue. (Or one with a logical color progression from blue to red, implying cold to hot.)

He also notes that the values for each color change because it's set up in quintiles, five equivalent segments of the dataset. The numbers that those quintiles represent change over time as case numbers change. For example, in the July 2 map, red counties had between 2,961 and 4,661 cases per 100,000 residents. But on the July 17 map, red counties have between 3,769 and 5,165 cases per 100,000.

The state's website says the charts are "meant to aid understanding whether the outbreak is growing, leveling off, or declining and can help to guide the covid-19 response." Georgia Person argued that, by not formatting the maps to show the increase in cases, the state is abdicating its responsibility to highlight important information, whether it was done by poor design or with malicious intent.

Rural areas of Georgia have been particularly hard-hit, especially counties with majority African-American populations. Rural African Americans are more vulnerable to dying from covid-19.

Staffing is a big hurdle for child care, scarce in rural areas

A story from rural Illinois neatly encapsulates the hurdles rural areas face in finding or providing reliable, qualified, affordable child care, Nat Williams reports for Illinois Farmer Today.

It's difficult for small towns to sustain a child-care center, according to Lori Longueville, director of Child Care Resources and Referrals at John A. Logan College in Carterville. The agency is one of several in the region that focus on child-care needs. "For rural areas the top challenge is to find qualified staff," she told Williams.

Low pay is a big part of the problem there; though lead day-care teachers must have certain qualifications under state law, the pay isn't often enough to justify the time and expense to obtain those qualifications, Williams reports. Those with associate degrees are generally more inclined to try for better-paying substitute teacher jobs in the public schools instead.

Ensuring the availability of rural child care is becoming more important, especially as more farmers and farming spouses seek work off the farm, Williams reports. Some rural communities are considering non-profit options.

'I don't know if the virus will kill me or it's going to be my rage" at anti-maskers, asthmatic clerk in rural store says

Lori Wagoner at her workstation (Photo by Eamon Queeney, The Washington Post)

Lori Wagoner, 63, never expected that her job as a retail clerk in a small North Carolina town would become so dangerous. But as she told The Washington Post for a July 18 package of 12 oral histories from the pandemic, covid-19 has drastically changed her job responsibilities.

Wagoner told reporter Eli Saslow that she has asthma, and if she got the novel coronavirus, she’d have an increased chance of developing a severe version of its disease. Thus, North Carolina’s mask mandate is crucial to her health, and she says about 95 percent of her customers have followed signs outside the store and worn a mask, but many of those who don’t have not been kind to her. Many are coastal visitors from cities: "They come here to have a good time and maybe they’re drinking. Some of them would see our signs, open the front door, and just yell: “F--- masks. F--- you.” Or they would walk in, refuse to wear a mask and then dump their merchandise all over the counter."

She relayed one encounter that spiraled downhill: “He rolled his eyes and ignored me, so I knew where it was going. . . . He said he just wanted to buy a drink. I said, ‘Okay, that means I will get your drink while you wait outside and I will bring it to the door.’ But he’s still moving into the store, and I’m trying to stay in front of his path and keep him from going down the aisle. He said, “Come on, lady. I just want water. I said: I’m tired of this. Just leave the store now.’ He kept moving toward me, yelling, ‘ADA exemption, ADA exemption’,” referring to the Americans with Disabilities Act that protects people with disabilities -- but not mask mandates.

“And now my body was starting to shake. It was fear and so much anger. My co-worker was yelling for him to get out, and another customer started yelling, and finally he stomped around for a while and then turned back outside. We locked the front door and my co-worker and I went back into the storage room. We sat there and sobbed.”

Now, at this small store on the coast of North Carolina, in a town Wagoner apparently didn't want to name, a customer has to ring a doorbell to enter. And next to her, behind her register, is pepper spray. With the local sheriff’s office refusing to help enforce the mandate, she said, she is now acting as enforcer of the mask mandate and ultimate defender of her own life; a retail clerk intimately trained in an array of behaviors from the public in response to a scientific and public-health effort.

“I don’t know if the virus will kill me or if it’s going to be my rage,” she said. “Sometimes I want to cut America into different pieces, and all these anti-maskers can live together, and we’ll see how it works.”

July survey of rural bankers shows fourth straight month of recession-level readings, drop in customer visits

Creighton University chart compares current month to month and year ago; click here to download it and chart below.

The economy in the rural Midwest improved slightly but remained weak and below pre-pandemic levels in the past month, according to the newest update of Creighton University's Rural Mainstreet Index. The index is a survey of bankers in about 200 rural communities with an average population of 1,300 in 10 states where agriculture and energy are critical to the economy: Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

July's report was the fourth straight month that had readings consistent with a recession. "The overall index for July climbed to 44.1, well below growth neutral, but up from June’s 37.9 and April’s record low 12.1," reports Creighton economist Ernie Goss, who does the index. "Farm commodity prices are down by 12.5 percent over the last 12 months. As a result, and despite the initiation of $16 billion in USDA farm support payments, only 6% of bankers reported their area economy had improved compared to June while 17.6 percent said economic conditions had worsened."

Farmland prices continue to drop, and though farm equipment sales increased marginally to 34.4 from 32.8 in June, it's the 82nd straight month the category has been below growth neutral reading of 50.0, Goss reports.

Of the bankers surveyed, 55.9% said they expect 1-9% of farm loans in their area to default over the next 12 months. And during the last two weeks of the pandemic, 38.2% said they'd seen a decline in customer visits and 32.4% said they'd seen fewer loan applications.

Creighton University chart

Rural hospitals unsure about how to spend CARES Act money, and whether they'll have to return some of it

Rural hospitals have been allocated tens of billions of dollars from the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, but the aid has barely kept many rural hospitals afloat, and many are seeking guidance about how they're allowed to use the aid and whether they'll have to return some of it if they don't spend it quickly enough, Liz Carey reports for The Daily Yonder.

One problem is that many rural hospitals didn't see any covid-19 patients, so they're not sure how funds meant to help with covid-19 expenses can be spent and should be reported, and some rural hospital CEOs say the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines are unclear, Carey reports.

Rural hospitals got CARES Act funds n several ways; $10 billion was appropriated to help rural hospitals treat covid-19 patients and cover revenue shortfalls from canceling normal business such as elective surgery. Some rural hospitals also received funds allocated for providers with a higher historical share of revenue from Medicare compared to total net patient revenue from all sources.

Rural hospitals rely more on Medicaid and Medicare, but often get less funding because the formula Congress used to allocate the money ended up disproportionately helping providers that have many privately insured patients, the Kaiser Health Foundation reports. Rural hospitals are generally more vulnerable to Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement policy changes since they rely so much on it.

"For hospitals who received Paycheck Protection Program loans from the Small Business Administration, there are even more questions," Carey reports. "The biggest of these is whether hospitals that use the PPP program to pay for salaries will have to return some reimbursements from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."

Some new funding is coming, too: "On July 10, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the federal government would be providing another $1 billion to some rural hospitals, as part of a larger $4 billion in funding to hospitals serving vulnerable populations," Carey reports. "The funding would go to 500 hospitals, health clinics and health centers in rural areas, as well as to some health-care facilities in urban areas that provide services to patients in rural areas. Payments will range from $100,000 to $4.5 million for rural designated providers and between $100,000 and $2 million for other providers."

Rural home prices rise as people consider leaving cities during pandemic

New data from Realtor.com suggests that people may be increasingly interested in moving to rural areas during the pandemic.

The data, "which compared this June to June of 2019, found that homes in rural and suburban zip codes saw the biggest jump in average views per property," Dante Chinni reports for NBC News. "Homes in urban zip codes had a 19 percent increase in views compared to last year. But homes in suburban zip codes had a much larger 30 percent jump. And homes in rural zip codes saw a 34 percent increase in views."

Chinni cautions that property views don't necessarily translate to sales, and it's difficult to imagine the pandemic reversing the larger trend toward urban migration. "But these numbers show there is at least an interest in getting out of the most densely packed areas and into communities that are more spread out. Anecdotal evidence suggests some of it may be about searching for second-home getaways in more remote communities," Chinni reports.

Absentee landowners who know little about farming may stymie farmers from protecting water and soil

Absentee farmland owners may be preventing farmers from embracing conservation practices because they don't net as much profit, Dan Charles reports for NPR.

Midwestern farmers only own about half the land they use, on average, and rent the rest. Many landowners are retired farmers themselves, but many are urban investors who don't know much or anything about farming. "That means when it comes to managing that land . . . it often plays out like this: say that someone owns 160 acres, of which 30 acres are ill-suited for growing crops. The landlord still will rent out the whole parcel," Charles reports.

Steve Bruere, president of Peoples Company, an Iowa company that buys, sells, and manages farmland across the nation, told Charles that they create detailed maps of each farm to assess how much money farmers earn on every acre, using both publicly available data and proprietary data collected by farmers' GPS-equipped machinery.

Bruere said about 10 percent to 15% of all acres in Iowa aren't profitable because of various factors. "These can be hillsides with eroded soil, or parts of a field where water sits in a big puddle after every rain. That's where Bruere's company advises farmers to cut their losses and maybe bring back some prairie instead," Charles reports.

So-called "prairie strips" are unprofitable chunks of land within soybean or corn fields where farmers plant tall-stemmed grasses and wildflowers. The strips allow native wildlife to maintain a toehold and help protect the farmland from water and wind erosion. But urban landowners pressure farmers to till all available land to make more money, even if it's lousy land, Charles reports.

The practice of renting farmland can discourage farmers from planting cover crops in the off-season, according to environmental advocate Sarah Carlson with Practical Farmers of Iowa. Cover crops can protect and enrich the soil, and is good for the environment, she told Charles, but it costs money up front. "Farmers who rent land, and who may not have access to that land in the long run, are reluctant to spend that money," Charles reports.