Conflicting federal definitions of 'rural' muddy the waters

130 counties with mostly or entirely rural populations (based on density in census tracts) are located in the nation's major metropolitan areas. Click on the image to enlarge it, or click here for the interactive version. (Daily Yonder map)

How do you define rural? It's a question that bedevils researchers, journalists, government and non-profit organizations, and even colleges (who gets a rural scholarship?), Amanda Kool writes for The Daily Yonder.

Kool, a lawyer and author, first noticed the weird disconnect in legal definitions of rurality when she moved from Boston to a rural area near Cincinnati a few years ago. "Bracken County, Kentucky is a long way from Boston in more ways than one," she writes. "And yet according to one of the most frequently used systems for defining what is rural and what is urban, both places are counted in the very same column of data, along with our nation’s other most urban locales."

That's because of differences in how different federal bodies define rurality. The Department of Agriculture splits counties into nine categories along a rural-urban spectrum by total population, market area and commuting time. "Three of them are based on census places, three others on census urban areas, one on designations of Office of Management and Budget Metropolitan Statistical Areas, one on USDA Economic Research Service rural-urban commuting area codes, and yet another based on the USDA Business and Industry Loan Program definition," Kool writes.

The Census Bureau, however, says "nonmetro" isn't the same as "rural," and more than half the people living in USDA-recognized rural areas really live in a metro area, Kool writes. That's because counties like Bracken have census tracts that classify as rural because of their low population density, but as metropolitan because at least a fourth of their labor force commutes to the metro's main county.

"The problem here is much bigger than a cultural crisis of identity," Kool writes. "Conflating notions of urban and rural with notions of metro and non-metro, and mixing usage of USDA ERS definitions with Census Bureau definitions, creates a muddy mess of what we think we know about broadband access, health care, employment, education, poverty, and so much else, both here and there. It means that the lines we use to separate the haves and the haves-not on any given topic appear less stark than human experience suggests, since under-counting the issues only serves to soften the statistics on either side of the line. From a programmatic perspective, it means that streams of funding for services intended to level the playing field do not reach some communities that might most need it, or that might best utilize it."

Editor of Tennessee weekly shows how to cover a suicide, especially of a young person and someone you know

Covering a death by suicide in a rural newspaper can be a tricky business. Many editors choose not to, mostly in an effort to show regard for the victim's family. Those who do cover such deaths may also face the difficult prospect of writing about someone they knew. The editor of a rural Tennessee weekly recently provided a good example of how to thread that needle, especially with the suicide of a teenager, something that has become more common in recent years.

Brad Martin

Brad Martin, editor of the Hickman County Times in Centerville, 50 miles west of Nashville, took a two-pronged approach: He wrote a straightforward story for the bottom of the front page, with the five Ws and several quotes from the friends and family of Jacob Hetherington, 17. On the opinion page, he wrote a long editorial about how he had met Jacob and his twin brother years ago while leading a Boy Scout troop.

Martin wrote that Jacob had seemed fine at a chance encounter a few weeks before his suicide, and cautioned that even sociable people like Jacob can fall prey to suicide if they don't have someone to talk to about difficult thoughts. He asked readers to reach out to others and make sure they have someone safe to talk to, and posted the phone number for the national suicide prevention hotline.

Martin is no stranger to the issue of rural suicide. In a 2016 article for The Daily Yonder, he wrote about how he became galvanized about the subject in 2003 when 13 people died by suicide in his town that year. That year he helped form the Hickman County Suicide Prevention Task Force, which has been a constant presence in the community with information on support and prevention.

Reaching out to others is an "inexact science," Martin wrote in his editorial, "but in a small place, where we know most of our neighbors, our job is to try, and to keep trying, isn't it?"

Some in rural Ill. want to shed Chicago; won't happen, but shows rural-urban divide that helped Trump win other states

Bureau of the Census map; click on it to enlarge

Illinois has become the latest state where rural lawmakers want to break it up to eliminate urban domination, but with a different twist. Instead of a relatively small rural area breaking off from the rest of the state, rural Illinois legislators want Congress to make Chicago the 51st state.

Their resolution "has eight Republican cosponsors in the state House (there are 44 Republicans in the lower chamber) and support among many of the state’s conservative activists. It’s the second such bill in as many years," Matt Vasilogambros reports for Stateline.

The chief sponsor, Rep. Brad Halbrook, "cites the many issues tearing the state apart," Stateline reports. "He listed Democrats’ 'overreaching' stances on abortion, guns, immigration, debt, pensions, Medicaid spending, property taxes, green energy and workers’ compensation as just some of the reasons" Chicago and Illinois should separate.

Chicagoland and Downstate Illinois have long had differences. They "hit a breaking point several years ago, when Illinois was mired in the longest fiscal stalemate in the United States since the Great Depression," Vasilogambros writes. "The budget battle between Democratic lawmakers and then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner lasted more than two years, threatening public university accreditation, statewide road construction and 'junk' credit ratings.

Halbrook told Stateline the mess was the fault of Chicagoland Democrats: “Everywhere I go, people say we just need to get rid of Chicago. It gets rid of all of our problems. My constituency is serious about it. I’m trying to save the state.” He is from Shelbyville, pop. 4,600, in central Illinois.

Cook County, which includes Chicago, has 40% of the state's 12.7 million people. The broader Chicago metropolitan area has 9.5 million, or 75%, so "without the Chicagoland area, Illinois would have fewer people than Connecticut," Stateline notes.

John Jackson, author of a recent study about Illinois regionalism and a visiting professor at the Paul Simon Institute at Southern Illinois University, told Stateline that a breakup is unrealistic. "But, he said, that doesn’t mean he thinks the movement is just a fool’s errand," Vasilogambros writes. "It’s about broader resentment."

“This represents a long-standing rural and urban divide that is serious in this state and prevents things from getting done,” Jackson told him. “It’s the same phenomenon all over the country, and drove the Trump vote in 2016 and will again in 2020.”

After Midwest flooding, hazards remain

Residents in Hamburg, Iowa, piled up ruined belongings and housing materials. (Photo: Des Moines Register, Brian Powers)

Record flooding has wreaked havoc in the Midwest this spring, but even where waters have receded, dangers remain. In addition to debris and infrastructure damage, "floodwaters overwhelmed private wells, sewage lagoons and public water systems, soaked over a million bushels of corn and soybeans, and picked up propane, anhydrous ammonia and fertilizer tanks," Donnelle Eller reports for The Associated Press. That has left "orphaned containers filled with industrial chemicals, pesticides, diesel fuel, oil and other potentially hazardous materials."

Local, state and federal officials are working together on the massive clean-up effort. Farmers, elevators and businesses have been ordered to destroy grain contaminated by river water, and state air-quality laws have been lifted to allow residents to burn crops, debris and damaged household items, Eller reports.

Officials are concerned about the raw sewage that many cities pumped into rivers for weeks after the floods hit. Mike Crecelius, the emergency management director in Iowa's Fremont County, is warning people not to go into the Missouri River without protection. "There are a number of municipalities north of us dumping raw sewage into the water. There are orphan tanks floating around, with valves coming off, losing pesticides, insecticides, acids and fertilizers," he told Eller. "You don’t know what’s in the water."

Though the volume of the floodwaters diluted some of the chemicals, environmental specialists also worry about the potential damage to fish and plants in the rivers, and the impact that could have on the larger ecosystem, including the people who eat the fish and get drinking water from the rivers, Eller reports.

Jury orders Bayer to pay more than $2 billion to California couple who claimed Roundup gave them cancer

On Monday a California jury ordered Bayer AG to pay more than $2 billion to a couple who said the Roundup gave them cancer. The verdict is the largest in U.S. history in litigation over glyphosate, the controversial main ingredient in the herbicide.

"It was the third consecutive U.S. jury verdict against the company in litigation over the chemical, which Bayer acquired as part of its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto last year," Tina Bellon reports for Reuters. "Both other jury verdicts also came in California, one in state court and one in federal court." The company faces more than 13,400 similar lawsuits in the U.S.

The jury awarded $55 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages to Alva and Alberta Pilliod, on the grounds that Roundup was defectively designed and that the company acted negligently in failing to warn consumers about the risks. "The large punitive damages award is likely to be reduced due to U.S. Supreme Court rulings that limit the ratio of punitive to compensatory damages to 9:1," Bellon reports.

Bayer argued that glyphosate has been studied for decades and found not to be carcinogenic, and said the Pilliods were both at high risk for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma because of other illnesses they had. The company said it will appeal the decision.

Journal of Appalachian Health begins publication, and it's about experiences in the region, not just research

Researchers in the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky have started the Journal of Appalachian Health, an online, peer-reviewed journal, saying their overall objective "is to improve the health status of the population of Appalachia through the rapid dissemination of knowledge of their health problems and evidence-based solutions to them." The journal is available free to all readers, and all users are free to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format; and can remix, transform, and build on the material for any purpose.

"There is knowledge in the pages of Appalachia’s hills," the editors write in the first issue. "This journal is positioned to find and publish those translations. It grows from a need to provide an outlet for scholarship about Appalachia’s health so that knowledge, and occasionally wisdom, is shared with those who care about and are committed to improving the region’s health."

The journal's first article reports that children 7 to 9 years old in parts of Appalachian Ohio are almost five times as likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke as children in the nation, and that parents likely under-report the prevalence of smoking in their homes, based on blood samples taken from 404 children.

The journal is open to essays and commentaries as well as research reports. Jill Crainshaw of the divinity school at Wake Forest University writes about the experiences of students who have taken "a multicultural contexts course that includes a 10-day sojourn in the mountains of North Carolina. . . . The health and well-being of human communities are connected to the health and well-being of the geographic places where people live, work, and play."

Apply by July 19 for free, expenses-paid workshop in NYC on 'cash register justice,' all about fines, fees, bail and jail

Policies of prosecutors and judges make the burden of fines, fees, bail and jail vary widely across the criminal-justice jurisdictions of the United States. Though some policies cause overcrowding of local jails, there has been relatively little reporting at the local level about such policies, and that "has helped to keep the costs, and their consequences, hidden to many Americans; and it has created a troubling gap in public understanding of the current state of our justice system," says the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of the City University of New York.

To help fill that gap, the center is conducting a two-year program of workshops for U.S. journalists. It held one workshop in March and is seeking at least 15 reporters to attend one on Sept. 26 and 27 in New York, offering to cover travel, hotel and related expenses, followed by mentoring and research assistance from center staff and experts as required. Reporters will be expected to publish or broadcast at least one story arising from their fellowship work within a reasonable time after the conference.

The selection will be based on project proposals related to the general theme of “cash register justice” that are either underway or contemplated. Applications must include a reference letter from an assigning editor or other commissioning editor who knows the applicant’s work and a short bio. (Freelancers are eligible.) Previous recipients of CMCJ reporting fellowships are eligible to apply. The deadline for applications is Friday, July 19. An application form isavailable here. Send questions to CMCJ Journalism Coordinator Maurice Possley at mauricepossley@gmail.com.

The fellowship is supported by Arnold Ventures, formerly known as the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

"Few Americans are aware that prisons and jails confine thousands of people whose main offense is that they are too poor," the center says. "Confronted with an accumulation of fees and fines associated with both felony and non-felony convictions as well as unpaid tickets and other civil penalties, they wind up behind bars in what amounts to a 21st century version of debtors’ prisons. . . .  Fines and fees imposed by local justice systems around the U.S. drive unemployment, family instability, recidivism and poverty in the most at-risk communities. Just as problematic: Two-thirds of all prison inmates have criminal justice debts, which complicates their successful reintegration into the community."

Oklahoma hospital's struggles illustrate dire situation of many rural hospitals, show local residents' dedication

A tip jar to help pay employees shows the town's dedication to its hospital. (Washington Post photo by Michael Williamson)

A rural Oklahoma town's battle to save its hospital illustrates the dire situation so many rural hospitals are in these days. "More than 100 of the country’s remote hospitals have gone broke and then closed in the past decade, turning some of the most impoverished parts of the United States into what experts now call “health-hazard zones," Eli Saslow reports for The Washington Post.

Fairfax Community Hospital was once one of the state's top-ranked rural health care facilities, but when local oil wells dried up and farmers got hit by drought, the town's fortunes declined, and with them, the 15-bed hospital. It survived a 2011 bankruptcy and a string of owners, and was purchased in 2016 by Florida-based EmpowerHMS, which owned more than a dozen Midwestern rural hospitals. "The company promoted itself as 'a savior for struggling rural hospitals,' but within months of taking over, its corporate office had begun defaulting on some of Fairfax Community’s bills and cutting its spending budget, Saslow reports. "Eventually, four of the company’s hospitals had shut down and nine more had entered bankruptcy, including Fairfax."

Fairfax, Okla. (Wikipedia map)

The hospital is the area's largest employer, so leaders in Fairfax are fighting hard to save it. The town spent "more than half its annual budget on legal fees to sue the hospital's owner, in a bid to retake control of the hospital. If the town could do that, there was a chance it could save the hospital by partnering with a new management company," Saslow reports. While the hospital's ownership was tied up in court, hospital employees struggled to keep the hospital's doors open. Employees had been working without pay for the past 11 weeks, computer software was shut down for non-payment, and staff was running low on essential supplies, Saslow reports.

Some hospital staff quit because they couldn't afford to keep volunteering, but others stuck with it, some working 16-hour shifts, hoping for good news from the courts, Saslow reports. "If we aren’t open, where do these people go?" asked a physician assistant. "They’ll go to the cemetery," another employee said. "If we’re not here, these people don’t have time. They’ll die along with this hospital."

The hospital's ownership and management remains tied up in court, and because of that, paychecks are still weeks away at best. The town's vice-mayor, Charlie Cartwright, advised the hospital to remain open as an emergency room only, with a nurse, a doctor and an aide to operate it. Other patients would be transferred out, and that way, the hospital could stay open as it waited for a resolution without incurring the costly fees associated with completely closing, Saslow reports.

China retaliates with tariff hikes on $60 billion in U.S. goods; very bad news for farmers, especially soybean growers

Deutsche Bank Securities chart shows that peak soybean exports last year were half those of 2017.

The U.S. hiked tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods on Friday, saying that China had reneged on promises made earlier in negotiations. Today, China announced retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods. "The Finance Ministry said Monday the new penalty duties of 5% to 25% on hundreds of U.S. products including batteries, spinach and coffee will take effect June 1," Joe McDonald reports for The Associated Press.

Though President Trump initially said Friday that the tariffs won't hurt American consumers, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said later that American and Chinese consumers and businesses will be affected. But of all Americans, Trump's voter base among agricultural interests has been hit hardest by the trade war.

"Of the top 10 states most affected by tariffs, all but two of them, Washington and Oregon, voted for Trump in the last election," Patti Domm reports for CNBC. The top 10 states hit hardest by tariffs as a percentage of state gross domestic product are, in order of most to least affected: Louisiana, Alaska, South Carolina, Alabama, Washington, Kentucky, Oregon, Mississippi, Michigan, and West Virginia. Louisiana is the nation's top exporter of soybeans.

Later on Friday, Trump said in a series of tweets that the government would try to ease farmers' pain by buying their crops: "We will buy agricultural products from our Great Farmers, in larger amounts than China ever did, and ship it to poor & starving countries in the form of humanitarian assistance." However, experts said that won't work, because the farm sectors most hurt by tariffs sell corn and soy meant for animal feed, oils, ethanol, and other products, Jessie Higgins reports for UPI.

"It's not as easy as people might think to buy a bunch of commodities and ship them somewhere," Todd Hubbs, a clinical assistant professor of agricultural commodity markets at the University of Illinois, told Higgins. "This is not sweet corn. People don't eat it. It's high in starch and low in sugars and it doesn't taste good."

Many corn and soy farmers were already stuck with unsold crops from last year, and some stockpiles were ruined in recent flooding. Since China was our biggest soy customer and other trading partners haven't made up the deficit, experts predict farmers won't be able to sell their beans again this year. 

"The demand from rest of the world combined is not as much as the Chinese market," Grant Kimberley, marketing development director for the Iowa Soybean Association, told Higgins. "It means we're going to have significantly more soybeans in storage again this year."

Some farmers say it's hard to feel optimistic about this year's harvest, Donnelle Eller reports for the Des Moines Register. Brent Renner, a 43-year-old soybean farmer from near Clear Lake, told her: "A lot of us think it can't get any worse, that it can only go up from here. But that's probably not a safe bet."

Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series coming up in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan

The Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association is offering a series of 20 farm tours, workshops and special events across Ohio, Indiana and Michigan this summer to promote sustainable farming. The first tour will take place on June 1.

Click here for a schedule and more information about the 2019 Sustainable Farm Tour and Workshop Series.

Farm tour attendees can visit a wide range of agricultural operations, including dairies, heritage livestock farms, aquaponics farms, and farms producing everything from hops and herbs to grains and mushrooms. Workshops will cover topics such as gardening to decrease food insecurity, community outreach, and composting.

Third-largest U.S. coal company, Cloud Peak Energy of Wyoming's Powder River Basin, files for bankruptcy

The nation's third-largest coal company by production filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after failing to make a $1.8 million loan payment despite several deadline extensions.

The move could signal the beginning of the end for Cloud Peak Energy, based in Gillette, Wyo., Greg Johnson reports for the Gillette News Record: "Unlike previous Powder River Basin coal bankruptcies, Cloud Peak seems to be looking to shed debt and sell its assets rather than emerge as an ongoing company. What that means for the more than 1,250 employees at Cloud Peak’s three PRB mines — Cordero Rojo and Antelope in Wyoming and Spring Creek in Montana — is that for now, their jobs are safe, said Robert Godby, director of the Center for Energy, Economics and Public Policy at the University of Wyoming."

The company said it will continue normal operation of its three mines throughout the bankruptcy process, but it's unclear what will happen after Cloud Peak sells its assets.

"The real question here is, will there be buyers for all those mines?" Godby told Johnson. "They have different qualities of coal, different customer bases. . . . There is not a core of assets they’re looking to reorganize around. They’re looking to spin these off to any potential bidder."

It's also unclear whether Cloud Peak will pay local taxes it owes, and continue paying employees' health-care and pension benefits. On Friday, Cloud Peak paid Campbell County "more than $617,000 for the last half of its 2018 property taxes," Johnson reports. "It hasn’t, however, paid $8.3 million owed for the last half of 2018’s ad valorem taxes on coal production."

Study shows rural residents are driving global rise in obesity

A newly published study found that rural residents are driving the global rise in obesity, contradicting previous research that linked obesity to sedentary urban dwellers, Doyle Rice reports for USA Today.

That's especially true in high-income and industrialized countries such as the United States, according to the study, which measured body-mass index averages in 200 countries from 1985 to 2017. "Researchers determined that BMI averages are rising for everyone," Rice reports. "However, they were rising more quickly for people who lived in rural areas."

The researchers wrote: "The lower urban BMI in high-income and industrialized countries reflects a growing rural economic and social disadvantage, including lower education and income; lower availability and higher price of healthy and fresh foods; less access to, and use of, public transport and walking than in cities; and limited availability of facilities for sports and recreational activity, which account for a significant share of overall physical activity in high-income and industrialized countries."

At major rural employer Walmart, many workers earn below the poverty line as store managers average $175,000 a year

Though Walmart managers make healthy salaries, many hourly workers still have a hard time making ends meet, Abha Bhattarai reports for The Washington Post.

"Walmart said its store managers now average $175,000 a year, while its full-time hourly worker average $14.26 an hour," Bhattarai writes. "Average hourly pay of $14.26 equals about $25,200 a year for 34-hour weeks, which is considered full time at Walmart. That is below the national poverty line for a family of four."

Walmart posted $129 billion in profits in 2018. With 1.5 million U.S. employees, it is one of the nation's largest employers, especially in rural areas, and is the leading employer in 22 states (most of them in the Midwest and South). But with the national unemployment rate at its lowest level since 1969, Walmart is struggling to hire and keep employees, especially where higher-paying competitors like Target and Costco operate, Bhattarai reports.

Walmart raised its hourly starting wage to $11 last year, and its overall starting wages have risen more than 50% in the past three years. Last year the company offered  virtually free college to employees who major in business or supply-chain management, and expanded its parental leave.

Some critics, including employees, say Walmart doesn't allow enough workers to have full-time hours, which would make them eligible for health insurance, but a company spokesperson told Bhattarai that "a majority" of hourly workers are full-time and that about 175,000 part-time employees got moved up to full-time positions last year.

Newspapers must show their complacent communities that they are an essential civic asset, not like 'news from Google'

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

Does the reportedly mixed reaction to the death of a small newspaper on the Lake of the Woods show we are in "the golden age of ignorance," as Minnesota Public Radio blogger Bob Collins declared? Maybe, if newspapers can't convince communities that they are an essential civic asset.

Richard Fausset of The New York Times looks over a proof of the
final edition with Publisher Rebecca Colden. (Photo: John Engler, MPR)

Collins followed up on MPR reporter John Engler's report on this week's demise of the Warroad Pioneer, one of three weeklies in Roseau County, on Minnesota's northern border. Engler paraphrased New York Times reporter Richard Fausset: "He said he spent a week in Warroad, talking to locals about the paper closing. He admitted that most folks, outside of the Pioneer staff and their husbands, didn't seem too broken up about it."

Fausset disputed that, in an interview with me: "I talked to a lot of people who were very worried the newspaper was going to quit. What MPR reported does not accurately reflect what I found in the town. There are a number of people concerned about what happens next."

Engler did a little of his own reporting on the point. After paraphrasing Fausset, he wrote: "Out on the streets of Warroad, a handful of locals backed up his assessment," and cited one as saying that "he gets his news from Google, 'just like everybody else'."

That comment reflects "monumental ignorance," said Reed Anfinson, former president of the National Newspaper Association and publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, in central Minnesota. "There is no local civic reporting from Google. Google captures our work and pirates it – if it is available."

Anfinson also said, "A reporter finding some disgruntled, or disinterested, people and using them to imply definitive assessment of the community’s feelings about the newspaper, I find troubling."

Publisher Rebecca Colden told me, "There were people coming in throughout the day who said just the opposite." Interviewed before Fausset was, she said, "I think Richard's saying they're just complacent with the value of a newspaper. They like it, but they don’t value it as they should."

Colden said that feeling played a role in her decision to get out of the newspaper business. She said she met with many people in the community, looking for ways to rejuvenate the paper, but "The challenge was that there is a complacency within these small communities, that they just feel like the paper will always be there, especially a paper of this age." The Pioneer lasted more than 120 years.

And it wasn't as if she hadn't warned the whole town, in stark fashion. Colden said the Pioneer was the first of many Minnesota newspapers to run a blank front page in 2017, asking readers to imagine that there was no local paper. She told me that she did the sort of accountability news coverage that readers expect, and "They’re gonna miss all the information they didn't know they needed."

Colden said she could have borrowed more money and taken the risk of converting to free, total-market circulation, "but I need to know that there's really community buy-in to do that, and . . . the community buy-in was really lacking." She said that showed in school news, a local-paper staple: "Teachers and coaches just throw some things up on social media rather than send it to the paper."

Engler reported that Fausset was assigned to "tell the story of the prototypical American small town losing its voice." If so, he seems to have made a good choice; the paper is like many rural weeklies that have closed in the last 15 years: in a small town outside a county seat, with a shrinking advertising base and independent ownership that couldn't find a suitable successor or buyer.

Roseau County, Minnesota (Google map)

Colden said she couldn't work out a deal with the paper's former owners, who have five nearby weeklies based in nearby Baudette. That was after she'd considered going to free distribution, which she concluded was too risky, and tried to compete more directly with the county-seat paper, the Roseau Times-Region, 22 miles away. As often happens, local loyalties trumped other factors, Colden said: "Because of that community loyalty over there, we were never able to capture that advertising base."

She said her local ad base has shriveled because Marvin Windows and Doors, the main local employer, has "a new generation of workers" who were more willing than their predecessors to shop in other towns. "It doesn't bug them to drive two hours to go to Walmart," she said, so more than a dozen of Warroad's approximately 50 storefronts are empty. "We're really a community in transition."

The Pioneer's death "is more than a one-off loss of a newspaper," Anfinson wrote. "I am hearing from newspaper publishers and executive directors of state newspaper associations that their concerns about the future of small-town weekly newspapers is growing." Almost a year ago, Anfinson was featured in a Rural Blog item headlined, "Times get tougher for rural newspapers."

Now it seems even tougher. As the old saying has it, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And prove to their communities that they are needed.

Quick hits: Black coal miners, interpreters for rural-refugee health, a town dubbed 'Cancer Alley' and one that won't die

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 beautifully shot and written photo essay and longform story in The New York Review of Books examines the dwindling community of African American coal miners in southeast Kentucky, here.

In rural Missouri, interpreters are the key to health care for refugees, Sebastian Martinez Valdivia reports for The Daily Yonder.

A small Louisiana town near a chemical plant has been dubbed "Cancer Alley." Don't miss out on the great multimedia presentation on this story in The Guardian.

An Oregon court tells a town that wanted to formally disband that it's still a city, whether it wants to be or not, reports Oregon Live (The Oregonian).

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., says Trump administration not living up to promise to help farmers recover from disasters

U.S. Rep. Austin Scott
(AP photo by Evan Vucci)

Gridlock over a $17 billion disaster-aid bill prompted criticism for President Trump's administration from Rep. Austin Scott, who represents south-central Georgia. "It was a rare rebuke of the administration from a Republican congressman, most of whom have been in lockstep with the president's policies," Catherine Boudreau reports for Politico.

During a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing on Thursday, Scott read aloud part of a speech in which Vice President Mike Pence told Georgia farmers last fall that the administration would help them recover from Hurricane Michael. But the administration is breaking its promise, Scott said, since seven months later, Congress and the White House still can't agree on a disaster aid bill for those hurt by recent disasters, Boudreau reports. The main hang-up is that President Trump does not want to give more aid to Puerto Rico, and has made unsubstantiated claims that the local government has wasted previous aid money.

Scott, "who helped secure about $3 billion for agriculture in House disaster legislation, leveled much of his criticism at President Donald Trump’s White House," Boudreau reports. He "said the White House Office of Management and Budget has yet to submit a formal disaster request to Congress to supplement already-authorized federal emergency aid, but has done so for other priorities. He noted that OMB last week asked for $4.5 billion to address what Trump has described as a humanitarian and security crisis at the border with Mexico," Boudreau reports.

In his remarks, Scott obliquely criticized Mick Mulvaney, the former OMB director and Trump's acting chief of staff, who has been a leading opponent of agricultural subsidies. "I appreciate the vice president’s comments. I appreciate the president’s favorable comments about the agricultural community," Scott said. "But when things are then handed off to people at the Office of Management and Budget, who consider the American farmer and the American farm family nothing but subsidy-sucking freeloaders, then there’s a disconnect in what is actually coming out of the administration, and what the administration is telling us that they’re going to do."

Scott said OMB's opposition to disaster aid for farmers has been a major stumbling block in negotiations, and said his constituents will start losing their farms and homes soon if Congress doesn't pass an aid package, Boudreau reports.

Agriculture needs more tech specialists; hard to recruit

Some may consider agriculture old-fashioned, but it relies on innovation as much as any industry, so states that want to continue being ag powerhouses see a need to invest in high-tech ag education.

"Science and technology will be core to the farming revolution, which teachers and agricultural leaders envision as including robots, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial images and GPS technology, alongside big data that affects everyone — suppliers, farmers, traders, processors, retailers and consumers," April Simpson reports for Stateline.

The farm sector needs more tech experts to help develop precision agriculture, but many techies have no idea that agriculture is even an option for them. Ag educators and advocates "say part of the problem is marketing: Most people, including students, equate agriculture with farming. The industry gets limited media exposure, they said, but also needs to do a better job of promoting itself, particularly as high-tech," Simpson reports. "But agriculture can be a tough sell to students when other flashy majors are competing for attention. Engineering programs, for example, often have ample resources and funding. Computer science academies can give students computers." 

Also, "The agricultural industry can feel insular and difficult to break into for those who didn’t grow up on a farm, in a rural area or with an industry connection," Simpson reports. The industry is 95% white and mostly male, inhibiting non-white and female students. And there aren't enough certified ag teachers in public schools to help more students see farming or ag tech as viable career paths.

There's money to be made. A U.S. Department of Agriculture report found that, if farmers had better access to digital technologies, the U.S. could increase its agricultural production by almost 18%, meaning $47 billion to $65 billion in annual gross economic benefits, Simpson reports.

Tariff hikes looms over U.S-China trade talks; president of soybean farmers says they 'are in a desperate situation'

"U.S. and Chinese negotiators will meet today in Washington, with less than 24 hours until the Trump administration dials up the trade tension on Friday by increasing tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods," Ryan McCrimmon reports for Politico. "There’s some hope that China could provide just enough assurances it would concede to President Donald Trump’s demands so the administration will delay a tariff hike — but there’s far more doubt that an eleventh-hour resolution can be reached."

Prices on grains and most other U.S. commodity crops were down this morning in anticipation of the tariff hike. Soybeans are in a particularly tough spot: "Soybeans are the United States' single biggest export to China, so prolonged negotiations and additional tariffs will hit the commodity hard," Anneken Tappe reports for CNN Business. "Soybean futures for July, the most active contract, were down 2.4% at $8.08 a bushel, while futures for May dropped 2.2% to $7.96, according to Refinitiv. Its putting the two closest contracts on track to log their worst one-day drop since October."

"This is a predicament for soy growers,” Davie Stephens, a soybean farmer from Clinton, Ky., and the president of the American Soybean Association, said in a press release. "We understand that Mr. Trump and his administration have broad goals they want to achieve for our country, but farmers are in a desperate situation. We need a positive resolution of this ongoing tariff dispute, not further escalation of tensions." Stephens warned that soybean growers' "patience is wearing thin" with the trade dispute and said "the financial and emotional toll on U.S. soybean farmers cannot be ignored."

Justice sues Justice, so to speak: Feds seek $4.7 million in fines owed by coal companies owned by W.Va. governor

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice

"The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit against 23 coal companies owned by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, seeking more than $4.7 million in unpaid fines and fees for mine safety and health violations," Brittany Patterson reports for West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

The DOJ said in a news release that companies being sued racked up almost 2,300 safety and health violations in the past five years, and ignored multiple demands by several federal agencies to pay the debts. The companies are in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, Patterson reports.

Investigative reporting over the past few years brought Justice's debts to the public's attention. A 2016 investigation by NPR, the Ohio Valley ReSource and WVPB "found that Justice’s mines owed $2.6 million in overdue mines safety fines, as well as millions more in unpaid tax debt," Patterson notes. An OVR story last month revealed that the amount had increased to $4.3 million. "That meant the Justice companies had by far the highest delinquent mine safety debt in the U.S. mining industry," Park reports. "And it was also far more than the companies owed when Justice ran for governor in 2016, when he pledged to make good on such debts."

Pennsylvania farmers, faced with immigrant shortage, get creative about labor sources in efforts to stay afloat

A worker harvests button mushrooms on a Pa. farm
(Philadelphia Inquirer photo by Michael Bryant)

Farmers nationwide are experiencing labor shortages because of tighter immigration rules and lower unemployment. Some in Pennsylvania, and likely elsewhere, are turning to unconventional sources of labor in an effort to stay afloat.

Almost half the mushrooms in the U.S. come from Chester County, Pennsylvania, in the southeastern corner of the state. But farming and harvesting them is difficult work. "Full-time positions require workers to pick six days a week, including holidays," Katie Park reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer. "Days start early and the work can be difficult, as workers have to bend between narrow, dimly lit wooden mushroom beds, knife in hand, and delicately cut thousands of mushrooms piece by piece."

Dairy jobs are also hard to fill. "They’re dirty jobs. They pay far above minimum wage, but they are dirty jobs. You’re behind cows. You’re going in and out of rain, snow, sleet, and hail," Caroline Novak, deputy director of the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania, told Park.

Because there are fewer immigrants or other willing workers around, "Some mushroom and dairy farmers desperate for labor have begun to turn to places they may not have once considered, such as inmate work-release programs, organizations that help the visually impaired find employment, and others that help veterans find work," Park reports. Such workers are sometimes successful, but overall it's not enough.

The labor shortage, on top of paper-thin profit margins, has hit dairies and mushroom farms hard. Some dairies have been forced to downsize or postpone upgrades, and there are so few workers that some mushroom farms haven't been able to fully harvest their mushrooms, Park reports.

Several farmers and industry insiders Park interviewed bemoaned the loss of immigrant labor and advocated immigration reform. "The American public as a whole does not want to work these hours anymore," said dairy farmer Christian Landis. "And quite frankly, if the immigrant labor force was not there, there would be a major void in the labor force of the agriculture industry across all sectors."