Back-to-the-land has come...back?

Barn in Benton County, AR.© Lisa R. Pruitt (2011)

If you're a young woman on TikTok, the algorithm likely feeds you some flavor of "tradwife" content. Names like Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman have become household names among twenty-somethings in the last few years. These women use their online platforms to play out a fictional reality of subservience to their husbands on gorgeous rural acreages, all while raking in millions from sponsorships and $70 bone broth powders. They espouse live simple, pared-down lives, cooking everything from scratch for a big, happy family, while finding time to spend their afternoons barefoot in the grass. They want you to believe that their life is good, and that more young women should aspire to be homemakers and homesteaders. 

These young women are the most visible group of young people promoting a modern "back-to-the-land" movement. They often root their desire in religion and "traditional" roles of men and women. Many scholars and commentators criticize the tradwife movement, saying it is regressive and uninformed. You can read excerpts of a New York Times article about modern "rural" aesthetics centered in patriarchy here. While some of the criticism rings true, this practice isn't new. Americans have demonized processed foods and dreamt of homesteading for decades. Back-to-the-land movements have drawn people's attention since their inception, inspiring families with traditional values as well as environmentalists and counterculturalists. 

The origins of back-to-the-land

America began its foray into the homesteading movement with the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered full title to government lands taken from Indigenous tribes to any settler who lived on and improved the land for five years. The back-to-the-land movement, however, originated in the 1900s. 

Many scholars cite Bolton Hall, an American lawyer and activist, as the origin of the movement. In the early 1900s, he formed the Little Land League, which wanted to make land ownership and homegrown food a reality for low-income New Yorkers. This organization existed to "assist in the acquisition of land and show how to make the best use of it." He allegedly planned a $70,000 endowment for a program that would teach people how to farm and help them purchase the land. His book, A Little Land and Living, extolled the virtues of rural living and explained how to begin to make a living for yourself off the land. 

John Korvola's Homestead in Valley County, ID from the early 1900s. Credit: Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

A group of reformists picked up Bolton Hall's work, arguing that subsistence farming could help white Americans survive during the Great Depression and avoid the dangers of urbanization. Their writings sparked a the "third wave" of back-to-the-land in the 1960s and 70s. The third wave originated from the protest movements of that era, and grew into a "rural antimodern counterculture". As Jinny A. Turman-Deal's article We Were an Oddity: A Look at the Back to the Land Movement in Appalachia identifies, many third-wave participants were driven by non-economic factors: a desire to "leave the rat race" or political and social turmoil in the city. Their migration created a 4.5% increase in West Virginia's population. 

A New York Times article from 1975 posits that these new, young farmers desired hard work and an escape from American capitalism. They generally eschewed tractors and other "labor-saving devices." This movement reached across the country, with people from Maine to Oregon allegedly growing up to 75% of their food in their backyard. While this article states that most farmers relied on their families' middle-class incomes to make this a reality, a 1991 article states that only about 48% of participants came from a middle-class background. 

Modern takes on back-to-the-land

Homesteading, a popular part of the back-to-the-land movement, has picked up considerable steam in the last 10 years. A November 2024 report from Fannie Mae shows that interest in rural mortgages has increased almost 80% since the start of COVID-19. Homesteaders of America, a conservative, Christian-adjacent homesteading advocacy group, conducted a poll in 2022 to assess the state of homesteading in America. They found that approximately 50% of their respondents were under 40 years old, and about 50% identified as conservative. Most were employed full-time, making at least 50,000 a year. Over 80% were married.

These findings align with the prevailing modern conception of homesteading. Conservative, young families with enough capital to secure property are the ones moving out to a subsistence farm. While I used the example of tradwives as the group most visible in mainstream media, queer and trans homesteaders utilize social media to share their experiences of living off the land, too. A recent CNN article highlighted some of these influencers, who stated they didn't see homesteading as a "conservative, separatist" movement, but rather a community-centered endeavor to build something they're proud of. 

Regardless of politics, many young aspiring farmers and homesteaders take up homesteading for similar reasons: increased health and well-being, an escape from tumultuous politics, and a desire to be more in touch with nature. These groups face a common challenge: a daunting rural real estate market. A 2022 Study from the National Young Farmers Coalition, however, found that 59% of young farmers stated that finding the land to farm was their biggest hurdle. Young farmers are being outbid by more established farmers, as well as large agricultural corporations. This statistic has been true for decades (as this 2012 blog post explains in an analysis between the United States and Greece). In some communities, leasing from community members or land trusts makes homesteading more accessible. In major cities, organizations exist to help low-income residents urban homestead in community co-ops. 

Despite the obstacles, homesteading and back-to-the-land movements draw new converts every day. While the media continues to criticize the tradwives from a feminist perspective, we should recognize that their lives resonate with so many young people. So many of the political pressures of the late 60s and 70s exist today: high inflation, declining trust in politics, and foreign wars impacting oil.

Back-to-the-land has come and gone as a desirable life path for over a century. It seems as if proponents, for decades, have thought it is the cure for societies' ills. Interestingly, the draws are the same, regardless of politics, though each group seems to try and fit their politics to their reasons. At the end of the day, tradwife or drag queen, some people want to put their hands in the dirt.

Big tech sets its sights on rural Arizona

The blog’s most recent post discussed the Rural Health Transformation Program. Passed as part of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” this “rural slush fund” was added as a last-minute sweetener to secure the support of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

One of the $50 billion fund’s stated goals is “tech innovation.” States utilizing the funds must spend them on three or more approved uses, including:

Providing training and technical assistance for the development and adoption of technology-enabled solutions that improve care delivery in rural hospitals, including remote monitoring, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies.

This sounds promising. Rural hospitals face unique challenges, and technology that improves care and increases capacity could be transformative. An earlier post on this blog discussed how RFK Jr. has promoted AI nurses as a potential solution to the rural health care crisis. That optimistic vision contrasts sharply with how artificial intelligence is currently arriving in many rural areas.

In December 2025, Sharon Goldman reported for Fortune on a massive AI data center project planned for rural Arizona. The development would be built on a 2,000-acre property called Hassayampa Ranch, located about 50 miles west of Phoenix near the unincorporated community of Tonopah in western Maricopa County. The area is home to a few hundred residents, drawn there for its tranquility and clear skies for stargazing.

Photo caption: Buckeye Ranch, Tonopah. © Nextdoor

This quiet corner of the desert has become the center of intense activity since developer Anita Verma-Lallian purchased the land for $51 million, backed by billionaire venture capitalist and Trump mega-donor Chamath Palihapitiya. The plan is to spend as much as $25 billion to build a data center that would produce 1.5 gigawatts of compute and consume as much electricity as a million homes.

Photo caption: Visualization of the land parcel. © Jason Ma, 2025

Investment in rural communities sounds exciting, but who benefits? As Andrew Aitken noted in The Builder Bureau, AI is largely being developed for and used by urban populations, while rural people continue to struggle with poor network coverage and slow internet speeds. So while it remains unclear whether Tonopah will reap any benefits from hosting AI infrastructure, residents are already bearing the costs.

This pattern echoes concerns raised in prior entries on this blog. A May 2024 post discussed how rural folks in Montana are resisting efforts to make their land a “carbon sponge” for urban America. As one county commissioner put it:

The question I keep hearing is, ‘Why are they making us the dumping ground for the rest of the country?’

A similar dynamic is at play in Tonopah, with rural Arizona poised to bear the environmental burden of infrastructure that primarily serves urban tech consumers.

In her Fortune article, Goldman explains that Tonopah residents are already worried about incoming noise and light pollution, traffic and infrastructure strain, and negative impacts on property values. Concerned community members have organized and signed petitions against the development. But with such a small population, their political power is limited against billionaire-backed interests. As Kathy Fletcher, a 76-year-old resident who lives on a one-acre plot next to the Hassayampa Ranch site, said:

All we can do is plead with the people here... We’re kind of treated like the redheaded stepchild, and they just think they can throw anything they want out here... We’re having a difficult time fighting the battle to tell people, ‘You can make a difference.’

Another major concern is water. AI data centers generate vast amounts of heat and require millions of gallons of water per day for cooling. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a medium-sized data center can consume up to 110 million gallons of water per year—equivalent to the annual water usage of approximately 1,000 households. Larger data centers can use up to 5 million gallons per day. For the people of Tonopah, who rely almost exclusively on ground wells for their water needs, the prospect of a massive development tapping into their water supply is daunting.

As Dillon Beckett wrote on this blog, utility-scale projects are “overwhelmingly sited in rural areas” and tend to “benefit a sliver of the community’s social strata (wealthy, often absentee landowners, with extensive real estate holdings) while spreading the cost across the entire community.” The Hassayampa Ranch data center fits this pattern: Silicon Valley investors stand to profit, while local residents face rising utility costs, depleted aquifers, and a transformed landscape.

Tonya Pearsall, a Tonopah resident who has lived in the area since 1999, feels a profound sense of loss as this project rapidly changes the character of her once-calm community:

We used to be able to see the Milky Way—that’s why we moved out here... It’s painful... I could break down and cry.

Photo caption: The night sky over Maricopa County. © David Iversen, 2025.

There is some movement in Congress to address these concerns. Representative Jim Costa (D-CA) has introduced the Unleashing Low-Cost Rural AI Act, which would require the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, and Energy to study the impact of AI data center expansion on rural areas, including effects on energy supply, consumer costs, and infrastructure needs. Whether such a study will lead to meaningful protections for communities like Tonopah remains to be seen.

The Hassayampa Ranch project is not unique. Similar fights are playing out in Louisiana, Wisconsin, and Georgia, where rural residents are pushing back against data center proposals that promise economic development but threaten local resources and quality of life.

As AI continues its rapid expansion, rural communities across the country will increasingly find themselves on the front lines of a familiar struggle: who decides what happens to rural land, and who bears the cost of progress?

My Rural Travelogue (XLI): Exploring rural Japan amidst rising rice prices

Truck delivering rice plants in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, May 2025

I traveled to Japan for the first time in late May, which happened to be amidst a spike in rice prices.  As such, this was a topic much in the news during my time there, and I got interested in the matter and talked to many of our guides about why prices have risen so steeply of late.  I'll return to that subject below.  

Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture

Rice farms everywhere.  While on Honshu, the primary island in the Japanese archipelago, I had the opportunity to take many photos of rice fields and rice farming--and even a few rice farmers.  You don't have to get far out of the major cities--and this includes looking out the windows of bullet trains (the Japanese is "shinkansen") as you are whisked through the countryside--to see multitudes of what appear to be small family rice farms.  (All photos are (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025).

Agricultural activity
Rural Shiga Prefecture, May 2025

We learned that in exurban and rural places, many families have their own little family rice paddy. This seems especially common among elderly folks.  For example, in one village in Shiga prefecture (where I took the photo above of the rice plant delivery truck), we met a Japanese gentleman who came to greet us and take our photo at the local shrine.  He is retired from local government, and when we asked if he is a rice farmer, he said not any more, though he still raises a vegetable garden.   (The man, photo below, wore an Anaheim Angels baseball cap to signify he is a Shohei Ohtani fan, he told us, because that was Ohtani's first team; when he is out of his village, he wears a Dodgers cap to signify his fandom to the wider world).  

One elderly rice farmer we met in his field said he planted his crop on May 9, and we were there less than two weeks after that.  He was weed whacking the grass at the margins of his small paddy, which was adjacent to other small fields being tended by other elderly male farmers.  We also saw both elderly men and women tending vegetable patches.

Elderly Ohtani fan in rural Shiga 
Prefecture

(By the way, my family and I got to these Nagahama villages with Biwako Backroads Tours, an amazing little biking and walking tour company based in nearby Maibara.  The entrepreneur behind this company, Takako Matsui-Leidy, has terrific English language skills.  Her company offers many tours of  this area around the northern part of Lake Biwa, an easy train ride from Kyoto.  See photo below, near a green tea plantation in the area.  Highly recommend these outings.)

Biwako Backroads Tour, Nagahama,
Shiga May 2025

Shirakawa-go Village, May 2025

We also saw a lot of rice farming activity in the village of Shirakawa-go, in Gifu Prefecture, on the Sho River.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of the historic structures, gassho-zukuri houses, with thatched roofs.  Farmers still live in the village, and we saw a great deal of rice farming activity while there, much of it involving mechanical equipment farmers seemed to be using to turn the fields or to put the plants in the ground.  We saw the same thing as we took the train from Takayama toward Nagoya a few days later.   

The spike in rice prices.  So why have rice prices doubled in Japan in the past year?  Well, it depends on who you ask.  Many folks indicated that the rice harvest was especially poor last year because of a very hot summer, and I found this New York Times story from October 2024 suggesting that scientists are working to genetically alter Japan's favorite rice to make it more heat resistant in the face of climate change.  Others mentioned that folks no longer want to be rice farmers and that those elderly folks we saw farming their own rice paddies, were a dying breed--literally.  

Vegetable gardens along irrigation canal
Rural Shiga Prefecture 

This New York Times coverage dug a little deeper: 

The shortage has been blamed on decades-old policies, meant to protect small-time farmers, that have blocked newcomers from buying or using agricultural land, leaving thousands of acres uncultivated. Efforts to change the system have been blocked by the national farming cooperative and other rural interests, which are stolid supporters of the governing Liberal Democratic Party.

That has put Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba between a rock and a hard place. Urban voters have chafed at the soaring prices and shortages, which at times have forced rationing by supermarkets.

Here is some late March 2025 New York Times coverage of a farmer protest--partly on tractors(!)--in Tokyo.  

Over the past year, Japan has grappled with a more than 200,000-ton shortage of its staple grain. Rice prices have skyrocketed, and supermarkets have been forced to restrict amounts that shoppers can buy. The situation became so dire that the government had to tap its emergency rice reserves.

Farmer in rice field, Shirakawa-go Village,
 a UNESCO World Heritage Site

The twist is that even as Japan deals with shortages, the government is paying farmers to limit how much they grow. The policy, in place for more than half a century, consumes billions of dollars a year in public spending.

Farmers exasperated with the government regulations protested on Sunday. Under cherry blossoms in a park in central Tokyo, more than 4,000 farmers, wearing straw hats and sun caps, gathered with signs declaring “Rice is life” and “We make rice but can’t make a living.” Thirty of them drove tractors through the skyscraper-lined streets of the capital city.

Politicians' heads rolling:  The "rice minister" resigns.  In the midst of all this, on May 20 (our first  day in Japan), agriculture minister Taku Eto resigned after a significant gaffe:  admitting he'd never purchased rice.  Here's the full quote: 

I have never bought rice myself. Frankly, my supporters give me quite a lot of rice. I have so much rice at home that I could sell it.

Transportation to the garden plot for an elderly resident of
rural Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture 

I'm reminded of Barack Obama's 2007 campaign gaffe: 

Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?  I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.

Local rice for sale
Kinomoto Train Station, Shiga

I guess he didn't realize most people in Iowa don't eat arugula--or shop at Whole Foods.  But at least there was a hint of him doing this own grocery shopping.     

The Times further explains Prime Minister Ishiba's response in pushing Eto out, with a July election looming:

Underscoring the political importance of containing the furor, Mr. Ishiba said on Wednesday that he had asked one of the Liberal Democrats’ rising stars, Shinjiro Koizumi, the photogenic son of a former prime minister, to replace Mr. Eto.

Here is May 24 and May 26 coverage of the crisis by Nikkei Asia, in which Koizumi announces sales of government rice stockpiles.  His stated aim was to bring the price down to Y2000 per 5 kilograms by early June.  Don't know if that has happened yet, but this Reuters story says prices in Japanese grocery stores have fallen for the third straight week.  

Rice plants (c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2025

Will Trump’s push to increase timber production help rural communities?

Many rural communities in the Pacific Northwest grew up around a once-thriving timber industry. Almost all timber harvesting operations are located in rural areas. Logging has, and continues to be, a source of pride in these communities. The timber industry allowed rural communities to thrive economically. However, the timber industry has slowly shrunk over the years. President Trump wants to revive the timber industry by opening more national forests to logging.

On March 1, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to expand American timber production. The Executive Order calls for the reversal of restrictive policies and the implementation of federal policies that promote timber harvesting throughout the United States.

This executive order is meant to assist rural communities that depend on the timber industry and help gain support for the Trump Administration. Will the change in policy work, and will it help the economies of rural communities? The answer is likely no.

The timber industry has been slowly shrinking across the United States, particularly in Western states. Many sawmills near national forests have closed in recent years. With the closure of mills, jobs in the rural communities that surround local mills have disappeared. For many rural communities, the local mill was the largest employer in the area.

One example of this is the closure of the Malheur Lumber Company in John Day, Oregon. John Day has a population of 1,543 people, and the Malheur Lumber Company employed 76 people. Following the closing of the Malheur Lumber Company, two other mills in Oregon closed in 2024. This means that in Oregon alone, seven individual mills have closed in 2024.

The closure of so many mills demonstrates that the timber industry in rural areas has vanished. This means that increasing timber harvesting in national forests will be of little help to rural communities. There is nowhere to go with the logs that are harvested. This is because “logs would have to be transported longer distances, at increased costs.” Struggling mills cannot afford to pay extra transportation costs.

It is also unlikely that any of these closed mills will reopen their doors. Susan Jane Brown, an environmental lawyer and principal at Silvix Resources in Oregon, said that “‘no businessman is going to invest millions of dollars in a new mill or in retrofitting an old mill.’”

Further complicating the implementation of President Trump’s Executive Order is the recent Forest Service budget cuts and employee layoffs. I have previously discussed how the layoffs of Forest Service employees disproportionately affect rural communities, but these layoffs also hamper the Trump Administration’s goal of increasing timber production.

The Federal Government has laid off approximately 3,400 Forest Service workers. Forest Service staff are responsible for organizing and implementing timber sales. Without adequate staffing, the Forest Service will struggle to market timber sales to private companies.

The Trump Administration's ongoing tariff war will negatively affect the wood products industry as well. If the United States’ economy falls into a recession, the timber industry and rural communities will be hit extraordinarily hard. If a recession were to occur, the housing market would suffer. Since the wood products industry is intertwined with the housing market, the effects on rural communities that depend on local mills would be devastating.

President Trump’s Executive Order is unlikely to assist rural communities that depend on the timber industry. Local mills and rural mill communities have already disappeared. The industry that needed to produce wood products no longer exists. Harvesting more trees will be of little use, as there is nowhere to go with the logs.

The Executive Order appears to be an attempt by the Trump Administration to appease rural communities who overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in 2024. However, this push to open more national forests will do very little to help rural communities that depend on the remnants of the timber industry. 

For further reading on the hardships that logging-dependent communities face, please see Jennifer Sherman’s book, Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America, and Michelle Wilde Anderson’s book, The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America. 

Hey, Taylor Swift, why don’t you perform somewhere rural?

I attended my first concert at five years old. I remember enthusiastically dancing and singing along to The Wiggle’s “Fruit Salad,” a hit that has honestly withstood the tests of time.

Since The Wiggles, I’ve been lucky enough to attend concerts of popular artists like Harry Styles, Coldplay, and Taylor Swift. These concerts not only allowed me to listen to great music, but also improved my mental health. Lisa Badanes, the chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences at Metropolitan State University of Denver, states that people who attend concerts have increased levels of endorphins and oxytocin. Additionally, dancing with others in a crowd can lead to increased feelings of belonging.

However, it’s not always easy to attend a concert. Most of the artists I’ve seen only stopped in Los Angeles, not my hometown of San Diego. While the two hour drive wasn’t the worst, it did require planning, gas money, and often buying a hotel for the night. And, for many Americans, especially rural Americans, it is even more logistically challenging to get to the city where their favorite artist tours. For example, in Harry Styles’ Love on Tour, he only stopped in four cities in the United States: New York, Austin, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Aside from distance, the price of tickets have become more of an obstacle for the average concert goer since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, the average ticket price was $96.17, in 2024 the average ticket price was $123.25. Thus, for many rural Americans, traveling to attend a concert with already expensive tickets is not financially feasible.

Take for example, Gunnison County in Colorado, which was recently mentioned in a previous blog post. Gunnison County workers devote 32 percent of their income on average to rent. After factoring in other necessities like food or medical care, they likely do not have the discretionary income to attend a concert out-of-state.

This is not to say I don’t understand why big artists only include major cities on their tour. Musicians like Taylor Swift can fill NFL stadiums, and all 30 NFL stadiums are located in major cities. Additionally, many artists prefer large venues in big cities because of the better security practices in place.

So, how do we make it easier for rural residents to attend concerts and see their favorite artists live? While the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit to break up the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly could drive down ticket prices, that doesn’t solve the high costs associated with traveling to another city. Thus, one answer is to promote festivals, as that seems to be one of the major ways to get big artists to visit rural areas. A festival, as opposed to a concert, usually takes place over multiple days with different artists performing.

For example, the music festival “Hinterland” takes place in Saint Charles, Iowa, which had a population of 640 people in 2020. This August, the festival’s lineup includes Tyler, The Creator, Lana Del Rey, and Kacey Musgraves.

Holding festivals in rural areas both allows rural residents to see live music from popular artists and invigorates the local economy. For example, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival happens annually on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee (population around 12,200), and generates approximately $50 million for the surrounding region. Tax revenue from the ticket sales and increased local spending funds the county’s schools, public safety, and infrastructure projects, and Bonnaroo has further donated more than $7 million to community programs since 2002.

Plus, music festivals are usually held outdoors, which circumvents the logistical challenge of finding a venue big enough for traditional concerts in rural areas. In fact, when it comes to festivals, rural areas should be the preferred option as they usually have more outdoor space than urban areas.

However, despite the possible incentives for holding festivals in rural areas, of the 26 largest music festivals, only three take place in rural areas. This is because corporations are more likely to sponsor an event held in a city since those festivals often have more attendees.

While I understand why ticket sales may be greater in cities, the success of festivals like Bonnaroo should prove to companies that we can entice people to travel to rural areas, and benefit those rural areas’ economies at the same time. Not to mention, a backdrop of mountains and a sunset while listening to Taylor Swift certainly doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

The ripple effects of a pivot away from clean energy reach Humboldt County

Efforts to develop offshore wind infrastructure off the coast of California have run into a confluence of Trump administration priorities: reducing federal spending, eliminating clean energy projects, and undoing anything related to the Biden administration. In a widely expected move, the Trump administration announced that they were pausing all offshore wind leasing and reviewing existing leases for potential termination. 

Since that announcement, companies planning to build wind turbines off the coast of Humboldt County announced significant layoffs, a sign that those projects may no longer be moving forward. While the Trump administration's announcement did not immediately revoke the permits for the planned offshore wind sites off of Morro Bay and Humboldt County, development of these sites and the onshore infrastructure needed to build the wind turbines and carry the electricity to its destination markets requires a huge investment that offshore wind supporters believe would almost certainly require federal funding. Given the current administration's posture towards wind and other clean energy sources (not to mention towards the entire state of California), that funding will not be coming anytime soon. Thus, it is not surprising that the companies who already paid the U.S. government $757.1 million to lease tracts of the ocean for wind energy appear to be rolling back those plans and cutting jobs that would have been focused on those projects.

In addition to the direct impacts on those losing their jobs with these wind energy developers, the Trump administration's decision to pull support for offshore wind will affect those in Humboldt County who were hoping for the economic benefits that were promised to accompany these projects. As part of the lease bidding process, bidding companies were required to "commit to mak[ing] a qualifying monetary contribution to programs or initiatives that benefit the greater Humboldt County community." The agreement with the federal government provided for about 7.5% of the bid amounts to go to local stakeholders, a not-insignificant amount considering that the total bids amounted to over $750 million for parcels off Morro Bay and Humboldt County. It is unclear how much of that money the County and other local stakeholders have received.

Beyond the direct payments, however, local communities stood to gain from accompanying investments in electric infrastructure and in making significant upgrades to the Humboldt Bay Harbor District, as well as accompanying increases in economic activity in the local area. Now, whether any of those benefits will materialize is an open question.

Even before the Trump administration moved to scuttle clean energy development, many locals in Humboldt County were skeptical about the promised benefits from wind projects. Calmatters' Julie Cart, in her excellent reporting on offshore wind development in California, noted that local communities would bear social costs and face strains on infrastructure, including higher housing costs and utility upgrades. 

As previously discussed on this blog, Humboldt County has experienced a series of boom-and-bust cycles from different industries, including timber, fishing, and cannabis, that have brought prosperity to the region only to collapse and give way to economic despair. Humboldt County's Director of Economic Development, Scott Adair, shared that locals "are cautious about the flimflam, if you will, the over-promisers."

Adair also noted that, even if locals are skeptical, the fate of the project is out of their hands.

“This is a federal project that is happening to us,” Adair said. “We have a limited ability to be involved and to help steer or shape the outcomes of the project.”

County supervisors expressed some cautious optimism that underscores how the region stood to gain and how it has suffered from prior economic hardships: 

The supervisors said they are excited about the possibilities, but they also worry about the pitfalls and are bracing for disappointment. “I go into this with my eyes wide open,” said Supervisor Rex Bohn. “I pray this happens. I hope like hell this happens.

From outside of Humboldt County, offshore wind is considered critical to achieving California's zero-carbon targets for electricity. 

“There is an undeniable urgency,” said David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission. “California has had unprecedented climate challenges. There is a fierce urgency to respond. We have to stop being academic on this. We have to build.”

But this urgency is not enough to justify the project's presence in Humboldt for many locals who have felt burned by prior experiences with extractive industry. Phillip Williams, a member of the Yurok Tribal Council, was extremely skeptical about relying on this project for economic benefits to the local communities:

“Everybody's lining up. It's almost like there's a predator. ‘Okay, these guys are weak. We can come in here and take advantage of this community that’s this desperate for dollars, because they've already depleted all their natural resources. What else can we extract from these communities, and these communities are so desperate, that they're willing to jump off the bridge blind, in hopes that there's gold at the bottom,’” he said.

Like other communities along the North Coast, Williams said the Yuroks need sustainable jobs, but not at any cost. More than a third of tribal members live below the poverty line, 60% of them children.

 Now that it appears likely that the project will be delayed, if not abandoned, skeptics in the local community may be breathing a sigh of relief. Their reactions to the proposed project certainly show the importance of local input and the potential pain that can be caused by major infrastructure development in rural and economically depressed areas. But the climate crisis continues unabated, and the Trump administration has not announced any proposals for economic development in Humboldt County to lessen the impact of the potential loss of offshore wind. 

The rise of the "barndominium" and the "shouse"

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, migration to rural areas has substantially increased. From 2019 to 2023, large urban areas like New Orleans and Cleveland experienced smaller population growth than average as many city dwellers moved to rural and rural adjacent places. The loosening of in-person work requirements likely played a large role in this migration to rural areas.

Theoretically, the pandemic's resolution and subsequent return to in-person work should have ended the rural migration trend, yet many Americans are still trading city life for country living. For instance, as of late 2024, young families with children were increasingly leaving big cities, opting instead for rural counties and small metropolitan areas. 

The benefits of living in the country are somewhat obvious. Cities tend to come with a higher cost of living, overwhelmed public school systems, higher rates of crime, and greater environmental pollution. This reality, combined with a rising cultural appreciation for the countryside aesthetic, has set the stage for homeowners to embrace a lesser-known phenomenon: the "barndominium."

Picture this: 14 acres in the middle of nowhere, abundant open space, and the opportunity to design your own home at a far lower cost than purchasing a traditional house. For people like the Barndominium Lady Stacey Lynn Bell, who built her dream barndominium and now helps others do the same, the appeal is irresistible. In a recent New York Times article reporting on the barndo's surge in popularity, Bell explained that: 

More people want bigger homes, more distant neighbors, land to raise chickens and grow vegetables, and an environment 'not as hustle-bustle.'

In the same piece, Brittany VanHouten shared that she and her husband expect their barndominium in Citrus County, Florida to be 4,500 square feet and include a home theater, library, craft room, and spacious detached garage, once finished. The Florida couple estimated their new home would cost under $300,000, which falls on the lower end of the average price to build a home in their area.

On top of all these advantages, barndominiums are often disaster-resilient, long-lasting, and energy-efficient. This is largely due to their slow-to-rust steel frames and customary metal roofs, which can withstand high winds and hurricanes. Pertinently, climate and disaster-resilient features are "very important" to 86% of homebuyers, according to a recent Zillow survey.

Of course, the barndominium has its disadvantages, too. As with rural living in general, taking up residence on vast open land may mean sacrificing easy access to schools, places of employment, restaurants, and shopping centers. 

A partial remedy to this problem is the shouse, an even more niche category of housing also taking over rural America. The term "shouse" is derived from a combination of "shop" and "house." While the shouse is extremely barndo-esque, it provides the additional option of allowing owners to combine their living space with their workshop. This feature virtually eliminates commute time, unless you count the time it takes to walk from one room to another.

Further, while a greater emphasis on function over form renders shouses somewhat less cosmetically appealing than their barndo counterparts, these structures share many of the same advantages, including lower costs and energy efficiency. 

If migration trends over the last few years are predictive of those to come, rural areas are likely to continue to experience an influx of new residents from bigger cities. Unfortunately, housing prices have already begun to increase in smaller towns and rural areas due to this shift. However, for those with the resources, patience, and vision, a barndominium or a shouse might allow potential homebuyers to make their rural dreams a rural reality.

Welfare for the rich in California agriculture

A new report by Gregory Weaver of Fresnoland on California’s Williamson Act adds to the unrelenting stream of news about the disproportionate power and influence of America’s wealthiest citizens. . The report by Fresnoland, a nonprofit newsroom and policy research lab launched by the Fresno Bee, examines the highly unequal distribution of tax benefits under the Williamson Act. 

Per this 1990 report by the Agricultural Issues Center at UC Davis, the Williamson Act, passed in 1965, allows property owners in participating counties to sign contracts with the county that provide landowners with reduced property tax assessments in exchange for restricting the development of their land. County participation is voluntary, although as of 2020, the CA Department of Conservation reported that 52 out of 58 counties had signed contracts with landowners. At its inception, the Act provided for partial reimbursement of the lost local tax revenue by the state, but state funding for the program ceased in 2010, leaving counties to absorb the loss of revenue themselves.  

The intent of the Williamson Act was pro-rural, as it was meant to protect California agricultural land from urban and suburban sprawl that was rapidly encroaching on rural areas in the mid-20th century. By lowering property taxes, the Act’s drafters sought to help farmers hold onto land that they might otherwise have been tempted to sell to real estate developers seeking to build the next subdivision. 

Williamson Act tax breaks have been exploited by large conglomerates and investors to generate larger returns on their investment in massive industrial farming operations.  Fresnoland’s analysis found that “just 120 mega-farms – less than 1% of recipients – are capturing half of the program's $5 billion tax shelter,” while the majority of farmers receive less than $800 in tax breaks per year. 

Under standard property tax formulas, agricultural landowners are taxed based on the purchase price they paid for the farmland. However, if they enroll in the Williamson Act, they instead pay a much lower tax rate calculated using the land’s potential rental value for agriculture, [Fresno County Assessor Paul] Dictos said. This preferential tax structure applies to all farmers enrolled in the Williamson Act. But Dictos said it’s the deep-pocketed investors who acquired prime farmland in recent years who see the largest tax reductions. The result of this tax formula is that the higher the purchase price, the bigger the Act’s tax subsidy, Dictos said. Small farmers and landowners who have owned their land for generations see hardly any benefit under this tax formula, multiple assessors from across the state told Fresnoland.

The Williamson Act property valuation mechanism has led to a discrepancy in tax benefits in which small and medium-sized farmers in Fresno County “are subsidized $24 per acre, while the top mega-growers get $62 per acre.” In Fresno County alone, Williamson Act tax benefits lowered county revenue in 2022 by $50 million below what it would have been absent the subsidies, and over the last 30 years the Act has resulted in a total decrease of $820 million in revenue, most of which has gone to the largest and wealthiest owners of agricultural land. 

Instead of providing a boost to local small farmers, most of the benefits go to large corporations that need no government assistance. Some of these tax breaks are going to investors far outside the county, including the second-largest subsidy in 2022 going to a $240 billion pension fund for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the fifth-largest subsidy going to Gladstone, Inc., a corporation whose purpose is “actively acquiring” agricultural land across the U.S. The report also found that nearly all of the land owned by mega-farmers that receive these benefits are more than a mile from any city.  Thus, the land is not even “at risk of being paved over by encroaching suburban sprawl.”

This outcome strikes me as profoundly unjust and something that the California legislature should rectify. At a time of increasing wealth inequality, providing tax breaks for wealthy investors and corporations to further buy up and consolidate farmland has the primary effect of selling out localities and rural areas that could use the tax revenue for schools, roads, and social services. The issues with the Williamson Act are not unique to California, as experts have observed that the farm "subsidy system is literally undermining the economic and social foundation of rural communities."

Given recent consolidation trends in U.S. agriculture, lawmakers should examine how exactly the Williamson Act is "saving" agricultural land and formulate new policy that actually helps small farmers who live and work in rural parts of the state. Providing financial benefits to large companies who use more water-intensive, extractive agricultural methods provides a sustainable future for only those companies.

Leaving rural agricultural land to the whims of the free market leaves those with fewer resources open to exploitation by moneyed interests. The same economic forces that compel small farmers to sell to industrial agricultural operations are those that led many people in Solano County to sell to the folks from California Forever (further discussed here, here, and here). 

It seems as though tax incentives to protect rural land inevitably end up being exploited by sophisticated investors, as is the case with conservation easements. And protecting existing landowners and creating incentives that drive up land prices only makes it that much harder for those, such as young people and immigrants, who do not already have extensive resources to start new farms. 

There are myriad other agricultural laws and policies that are intended to support farming in California and the U.S. more broadly. Yet the agricultural industry continues to move away from the subsistence model towards large, extractive, profit-seeking ventures. California should take a hard look at how the Williamson Act contributes to that trend and imagine better ways to support the people who live in rural areas rather than aiding those who simply extract profit from them. 

For more discussion of the Williamson Act, see here, here, and here.

As domestic water wells run dry in California, many rural individuals cannot afford to drill another one

Access to water is becoming more of a challenge in California, especially for rural communities in the Central Valley. Many rural families across California get water from domestic wells that tap into groundwater, but some of these wells are drying up due in part to climate change and the overconsumption of groundwater resources. This sets the stage for many political and legal battles across California.

Many households across California are not connected or do not have access to municipal water or sewer services. My family was one of them. 

When my family and I lived in Mount Shasta, California, we had a domestic water well that sat about ten yards from the house. When my parents began to have problems with the well, a pump company we paid to investigate the problem told us the well was dry. The only solution was to hire a drilling company to drill a new domestic water well.

My parents soon discovered that there were only nine drillers licensed to drill domestic water wells in all of Siskiyou County. All were booked out for months due to the high demand for water wells in Siskiyou County. In the meantime, my parents bought a 1,000-gallon water tank and would have potable water trucked in every two weeks.

After two months, the well-drilling company called with an opening for the next week. My parents promptly said yes, but the cost was beyond what anyone anticipated. While this was four years ago, the price of drilling a domestic well has only increased. Today, drilling a well costs an average of $5,500 in the United States, but the price “can range between $1,800 and $24,500, or around $25 to $65 per foot.”

Well Drilling. Credit: Paul Hamann

Well Drilling and Pipe Welding. Credit: Paul Hamann

My family was fortunate enough to be able to afford the hefty price tag for the new 360-foot well, but many California families cannot.

The past two years have been relatively wet, reducing the number of domestic wells going dry. As as result, press coverage of the issue has also fallen. Before that, California was experiencing a major drought, and thousands of wells went dry. Climate change and overconsumption of groundwater mean that policy makers and politicians cannot ignore this problem. 

In 2023 the Rural Community Assistance Corp. published a study analyzing water supply issues in California’s Central Valley. The study found that “32% of the 29,567 domestic wells analyzed are at risk” and that this creates a “burden that’s likely to fall disproportionately on rural disadvantaged communities.”

In numerous instances, the California State Government has stepped in. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) was implemented in 2014 to help tackle groundwater management issues in California. The Rural Community Assistance Corp. study also identified the overpumping of groundwater as a major concern for those in rural communities. Large farming operations often have more resources and can afford to drill deeper wells than the surrounding residential homes and communities, but agricultural overpumping of groundwater lowers the water table, which raises the risk of domestic wells going dry. 

With so many domestic water wells going dry, non-profit organizations, like Self Help Enterprises have stepped in to help people in the Central Valley. Self Help Enterprises owns 1500 water storage tanks that they loan out to people whose wells have gone dry. While these tanks are not a permanent solution, they help those who cannot afford immediately to drill a new domestic well. Self Help Enterprises also offers domestic well drilling services to those who qualify for the program.

While the past two years have provided more rainfall to California than prior years, many people's wells are still drying up. Many of these wells are dated and were drilled before the effects of climate change and overconsumption of groundwater were fully recognized. Rural communities and families will be hit the hardest as many will not be able to afford the massive price tag for a new domestic well.

This is a very complicated issue, and many stakeholders are implicated. All Californians will continue to fight for access to dependable sources of water. Future policy decisions regarding groundwater usage need to consider potential impacts on rural communities as domestic water wells in rural areas will continue to be at risk.

Rural Flanders questions reformed property law

In February 2020, the Belgian federal government reformed property law, more specifically, Book III of the Civil Code on goods. Later, Landelijk Vlaanderen, an organization that promotes the entrepreneurship of landowners in rural Flanders, asked for clarification from the government as the law allows people to access one’s property in special circumstances, such as to retrieve balls or pets. 

Article 3.67, §3 of the Civil code struck confusion across the country and had farmers questioning the interpretation regarding people’s right to access “unused” or “undeveloped” land. The paragraph reads as follows: 

“Where an undeveloped and uncultivated property is not closed off, anyone may enter it unless it causes damage or harms the owner of the parcel, or if the owner has made it clearly known that it is forbidden for third parties to enter the land without his permission.”

 

Worried that Belgian citizens might interpret it the wrong way, Landelijk Vlaanderen decided to officially ask for clarification from the government. While it is true that agricultural land may look undeveloped at times, this is only because fields aren’t sown every year. Allowing people to trespass on that land would cause major damage on the fields.

 

In fact, a clarification was made by the former Minister of Justice, Vincent van Quickenborne. He explains that the article focuses on “legal tolerance”, acts performed by third parties on an owner’s property, in the case of an unfenced property that is unbuilt and uncultivated. He adds that the use of the term “uncultivated” is done on purpose to exclude all forms of agricultural land. Thus, one could not invoke the paragraph to enter a meadow or a field, even if they’re not in use that year. Lastly, the owner of a parcel of undeveloped land can also prohibit access by erecting a sign or a fence.

 

Needless to say, Landelijk Vlaanderen organization was not pleased by this way of fact-checking. The former president of the organization, Christophe Lenaerts, deemed it insufficient. He has asked the federal government to clearly outline the damage caused to property rights and to thoroughly revise this legislation. 

 

But how did we get there? 

 

In Belgium, property rights are absolute. Nevertheless, the legislator established limits to that rule. These specific limits can be explained historically. Belgium used to be ruled by King Napoléon Bonaparte who made the first Civil code in 1804. At that time, property rights were “absolute and exclusive”. Today, it seems like Belgian society has traded individualistic interests of owners for general or public interest. Article 3.67, §3 is part of the property rights’ limitations. The government justifies its adoption by stating the individualistic dimension is historically and economically outdated. 

 

Still, the legislator emphasizes the requirements for one behavior to be considered lawful. One: passage on the parcel may be refused if it causes damage. Two: the land cannot be subject to acquisitive prescription. Three: a third party is prohibited from appropriating goods found on the land. Some authors say this “legal tolerance” basically allows you to wander around someone else's wasteland.

 

To this day, no changes have been made regarding article 3.67 of the Belgian Civil Code. Rural Flanders remains unsatisfied. Belgium has recently elected a new government, will it pay attention to rural Flanders’ concerns?

Public land access for those who can buy it

This (public) land is your land - or is it? That is the question in a dispute between a group of hunters and a wealthy landowner in Wyoming that might be heading to the Supreme Court soon. One normally understands public lands to be open to all. Yet some in the rural West, like the plaintiff in this case, Fred Eshelman, would like to keep access to the public lands to themselves.

In Wyoming and other parts of the West, federal lands intersect private ones in a checkerboard pattern that dates to the construction of the transcontinental railroads. In order to limit access to these public lands, landowners like Eshelman are trying to prevent corner crossing, in which people pass from one square section of public land to the next. Instead, they want to maintain sovereignty over the air and the tiny sliver of land at the very corner of their properties that abut the public lands, and prevent hunters and others from entering those ostensibly public areas.

Keeping public lands private seems to be a largely unpopular stance in Wyoming, which has the highest proportion of hunters of any U.S. state. While hunting’s origins as a livelihood and means of subsistence persist in rural parts of the U.S., in recent years, as discussed on this blog, its perception as a working-class activity has begun to evolve. The hunters in this case drove from Missouri for a weekend of recreational hunting and camping, but even so, the blockading of public hunting areas by a wealthy businessman has the feeling of a distinct class conflict.

The reason this story smacks of injustice is that the landowner doesn’t simply want to block access to his own land, but also wants to prevent anyone from accessing a large swath of public land that happens to be prime hunting ground. The lawsuit he filed against the hunters alleged $7.75 million in damages for trespassing in the air above the corner of his property, a claim that implies that his 22,000-acre ranch would lose a significant amount of value if the public were allowed to access the public lands adjacent to his property.

The desire (of an out-of-state pharmaceutical magnate) to prevent others from accessing the public lands strikes me as greedy and unfair. It also seems distinctly un-neighborly. While common decency prevents hunting on your neighbor’s front lawn, it is not uncommon where I grew up, in a fairly rural part of New Hampshire, for hunters to make their way onto private land, as public lands are much less prevalent on the East Coast than they are in the West. We still wear blaze orange when we go for walks or hikes in fall and early winter so we aren’t mistaken for potential targets. Typically, unless there are lots of No Hunting signs visible, hunters are free to hunt in whatever stretch of woods they wish. I have heard about big-game ranches in Texas with fences tall enough to keep deer from escaping, but I imagine that in most rural areas, absent those lofty fences, a similarly open custom to that in New Hampshire prevails.

That may no longer be the case in Wyoming. Lawyers on both sides of this case

agreed that Wyoming has changed from an idealized time when ranchers were open to hunters who respectfully asked to cross their land. Those days have faded, they said with an influx of money and people.

Another important aspect of the public land access debate is the impact of technology, which has made it significantly easier to identify potential areas to hunt. Local knowledge and relationships are no longer as crucial as they once were, because apps like onX have

allowed anyone with a smartphone and a subscription to identify both good hunting spots and the property lines that permit and limit entry to them.

This kind of technology has helped increase the number of hunters in places that were once the exclusive terrain of guides or in-the-know locals. If I were a hunter who lived in one of these places, I would probably be bothered by an influx of newcomers on local turf. But making it easier for people to avoid trespassing on private land doesn’t seem like such a bad thing for the owners of that land. And facilitating access to public land seems to be in keeping with the spirit of making lands public in the first place. It’s not surprising that, in a state where many of the locals are hunters, some Wyoming legislators have proposed a bill that would make corner crossing legal. It will be equally unsurprising if that bill faces significant opposition, considering the wealth and power of those seeking to prevent increased public land access.

The hunters’ attorney summed up the significance of this debate between two important - and notably rural - values:

It asks a fundamental question about our country and what we stand for. . . We do care about private property and the right to be left alone, but also we are a country of outdoors people and adventurers, hunters and travelers. . . . To me it’s this quintessentially American question of, Which one of our principles takes precedent?

But does your “right to be left alone” extend to the public lands next door?