Rural Counties and Subsidies

Monica Potts looks at farm subsidies and life in rural counties (via Mark Thoma):

  A 2008 USDA report found that over the previous year, the population of rural areas increased at a measly rate of 0.4 percent, compared with a growth in metro-area populations of 1.1 percent, and attributed the difference mostly to people moving into cities. Most rural counties actually saw a population decline. Unemployment has skyrocketed. Children in rural areas are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to die, and more likely to be held back a grade. Rural areas receive more government support in the form of farm subsidies and income support like Social Security, but that's largely due to their aging and more disabled populations. In general, rural communities receive less money per capita to support community services like law enforcement and higher education.
Klein notes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has an office of Rural Development that supports small-time entrepreneurs and infrastructure development like broadband in rural areas, but spends most of his time arguing against farm subsidies. First, farm life and rural life aren't quite interchangeable, and the billions we spend to support farms, including the $8.3 billion in direct payments and crop insurance we call subsidies, no longer support the actual people who live in rural America. In fact, they support the big factory farms that have eroded the quality of rural life.

The fact of the matter is that while grain farmers have been doing extremely well the past few years, before that, things were tough.  I can remember several years in the late 90's when about half of all farm income was either LDP payments or crop insurance payouts.  Our area isn't too bad for maintaining smaller farms.  We (guys on the other side of the river) have some monkey dirt, where guys can farm small farms and get pretty good returns, and there are a lot of town jobs guys can hold down and farm on the side.  Once you get out west, though, if you aren't farming, there aren't too many other things to do.  Take a look at the census data, and rural counties are emptying out.  It is pretty depressing.  And if the trends continue with oil prices, and we see peak production, things will be worse.  People will be hard pressed to live in the middle of nowhere if gas costs $8 or $10 a gallon.