Agro-Mafia and the Caporalato: How far-right immigration policy is failing rural Italy

 Le Langhe, a region in Northern Italy, has been heralded as the "New Tuscany" for its scenic landscape, tartufi bianchi, and quality wines. It's one of many parts of Italy that relies on rural agricultural practices for economic output. The agri-food industry in Italy accounts for almost 15 percent of its total GDP. It also represents an economic expansion: from 2006 to 2016, international demand for Italian wine grew by 74 percent. 

The people making the wine? Migrant workers from Romania, India, and Northern Africa. Foreign workers account for 10.3 percent of Italy's total workforce, but in the agricultural sector, around half of workers are migrants — around 400,000 or 500,000 people in total. Some are asylum seekers, fleeing violence from their home country. Some are hoping to pass through Italy to resettle further north, but are stuck due to European Union restrictions that require the first EU state an asylum seeker enters to be the one to adjudicate their claim. 

Trapped without status, many turn to temporary agricultural jobs in rural areas that pay little and require long hours. Their recruiters? Corporali, or intermediaries who offer migrants exploitative, temporary jobs and take a fee for providing them with work. 

Many refer to the Caporalato and their control of the industry as the "Agro-Mafia." In 2020, over 42 percent of Tuscany's 55,000-person workforce were migrants. Some reported working for as little as 3 to 4 euros an hour. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that when migrant workers are employed through corporali, their wages are sometimes 50 percent lower than those working under regulated contracts. Workers face rampant discrimination, racism, and poor working conditions. One worker in a study conducted by Amnesty International shared that after working from 6 AM to 6 PM and taking only a thirty-minute break, he was paid only 20 euros for his time. Rurality, of course, exacerbates all of these problems, leaving workers far from community resources and the employers with little oversight and incentive to stop their labor practices. 

In 2016, Italy passed Law No. 199/2016, which included criminal penalties for corporali and codified a new definition of "labor exploitation." However, the law has been heavily criticized for penalizing the intermediary worker, but not the employer itself. And given the high turnover in short-term agricultural work, many leave to a new job or exit the country entirely before prosecution is possible. 

The possibility of reform has become further complicated given dramatic changes in Italy's political landscape. In 2018, then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini abolished all humanitarian aid in Italy. Tens of thousands of refugees lost their status, forcing many to turn to agricultural jobs and expanding the reach of the corporali. The 2022 national elections fared no better: Giorgia Meloni was sworn in as Italy's first female prime minister. Her party, Fratelli d'Italia ("Brothers of Italy"), now leads what is largely considered to be the most conservative Italian administration since World War II. Meloni recently announced that pursuant to a new agreement between their two countries, Albania will detain up to 36,000 migrants rescued by Italian authorities in the Mediterranean. The deal also included a dedicated €650 million for new detention centers.

Beyond the evident humanitarian crisis, extremist immigration practices will have an undeniable impact on rural economies. Border restrictions and punitive immigration policy will lead to labor shortages in the agricultural industry, which relies entirely on migrant labor. Not to mention that declining population levels in rural areas have often been filled by immigrants working in those communities. Camini, a commune that had a population of 751 in 2007, now hosts over 118 immigrants from Syria, Bangladesh, and Turkey. Camini exemplifies how immigrants are often the difference between a community collapsing entirely or thriving. 

Read more about agricultural crime in Italy here. This article further discusses rural population decline in Italy. 

Ndala and Cyclone Freddy: the harsh reality of climate change

On March 13, 2023, Ndala, a village in northeastern Mozambique, was almost entirely submerged in water. Heavy rains caused the river running through the village to overflow. The torrent of water and rocks cleared everything in its path: houses and people inside them, roads, bridges, livestock, and vehicles. The cause of these tragic events was Cyclone Freddy, the longest tropical cyclone on record. Two years later, Ndala still faces the effects of the storm. The population endures isolation, illness, and deepening poverty. The cyclone injured many, tore families apart, and destroyed livelihoods. 

 

The people most affected by extreme weather, particularly in places like Mozambique and across Africa, are often the least responsible for the climate crisis. Those affected live in communities with the least resources to adapt to climate disasters such as Cyclone Freddy. As a result, these countries and population pay the heaviest price for climate change with their lives. 

 

This vulnerability is not unique to Mozambique. In his blog post “Rural vulnerabilities in a changing climate”, Ryan Chen highlighted how rural areas with weak infrastructure are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. He cites Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where drought is worsening due to it. Similarly, Ndala also lacks infrastructure and has trouble dealing with flooding. 

 

The increased frequency of floods and droughts directly impacts agriculture, threatening crop yields and livestock, primary sources of income sustenance for many rural communities in Mozambique. The cost of adapting to these drastic changes strains already limited financial resources of rural communities.

Malawi, a neighboring country of Mozambique, was also impacted by Cyclone Freddy. Recognizing the previous challenges, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the government of Malawi launched a US$53 million agricultural development program in 2023. The initiative aims to commercialize agriculture, enhance small-scale farming resilience, and improve food security and nutrition across the country. As part of this effort, the seven-year Sustainable Agriculture Production program will equip farmers with the skills and resources needed to combat food insecurity, increase income, and improve rural livelihoods. In addition, the program allows funds to be reallocated to address immediate needs such as repairs to infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed by climate disasters. 

Nevertheless, while the IFAD has been actively involved in improving food security and resilient livelihoods for rural transformation in Mozambique, it didn't provide direct assistance to the country following Cyclone Freddy.

 

Climate disasters often lead to migration. Cyclone Freddy left thousands in Mozambique without homes, forcing them to migrate in search of safety and stability. However, under international law, these people do not qualify as refugees because their displacement is climate-related rather than a result of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or social group, as defined by article 1 of the Geneva Convention. 

Climate-displaced individuals are classified as internally displaced persons (IDPs) if they remain in their country or migrants if they cross borders. Under the Geneva Convention, refugees are entitled to the right to seek asylum, non-refoulement (not being sent back to danger), access to healthcare, education, and work in host countries, unlike IDPs and migrants.

 

This legal gap has sparked an ongoing debate about the legal recognition of “climate refugees”. The UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) advocates for the expanded definition of refugees to include those displaced by climate change. However, many countries that ratified the Geneva Convention oppose this change, fearing it would increase migration and legal obligations. Amnesty International argues that concerns over mass migration are overblown. Instead, the organization emphasizes the need for humanitarian assistance, as climate change continues to displace communities worldwide. 

 

The case of Cyclone Freddy and Ndala underscores the growing urgency of this debate. Moving forward, the international community can no longer afford to ignore the impact of climate change on rural communities. Without action, climate migrants will remain trapped in legal limbo, denied the protections they desperately need.

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.

The role of rurality in Iowa's lurch to the right

The Iowa Caucuses will take place on Monday, and media outlets are chock full of coverage.  Particularly noteworthy in terms of attention to the rural-urban divide is this New York Times story by Jonathan Weisman headlined, "Why Iowa Turned So Red When Nearby Stats Went Blue."  While you wouldn't know it from the headline, it's very much a story about the role of rurality in presidential politics.  In fact,  Weisman uses the word "rural" 19 times.  I can't excerpt them all here (at risk of exceeding fair use), but I'll excerpt a few that I think are key.  A key theme: the impact of the the rural brain drain on Iowa's politics:    

Deindustrialization of rural reaches and the Mississippi River regions had its impact, as did the hollowing out of institutions, from civic organizations to small-town newspapers, that had given the Upper Midwest a character separate from national politics.

* * *

An analysis in 2022 by economists at the University of North Carolina, the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago of data gleaned from LinkedIn showed how states with dynamic economic centers are luring college graduates from more rural states. Iowa loses 34.2 percent of its college graduates, worse than 40 of the 50 states, just below North Dakota, which loses 31.6 percent. Illinois, by contrast, gains 20 percent more college graduates than it produces. Minnesota has about 8 percent more than it produces.

Even when young families look to move back to the rural areas they grew up in, they are often thwarted by an acute housing shortage, said Benjamin Winchester, a rural sociologist at the University of Minnesota extension in St. Cloud, Minn.; 75 percent of rural homeowners are baby boomers or older, and those older residents see boarded-up businesses and believe their communities’ best days are behind them, he said.

* * *

The politics of rural voters in the Upper Midwest may simply be catching up to other rural regions that turned conservative earlier, said Sam Rosenfeld, a political scientist at Colgate University and author of “The Polarizers,” a book on the architects of national polarization. Southern rural white voters turned sharply to the right in the 1960s and 1970s as Black southerners gained power with the civil rights movement and attendant legislation, he noted.

But rural voters in the Upper Midwest, where few Black people lived, held on to a more diverse politics for decades longer. North Dakota, with its state bank, state grain mill and state grain elevator, has retained vestiges of a socialist past, when progressive politicians railed against rapacious businessmen from the Twin Cities. Even still, its politics have changed dramatically.

The entire story is worth a read.   

This excellent Washington Post piece by Theodoric Meyer, published today, compares a rural county (Decatur, on the Missouri state line) with a metropolitan one (Dallas, suburban Des Moines in central Iowa).  Here are two key paragraphs focusing on the rural-urban divide: 

While Iowa’s largely White small towns and rural areas have turned redder and redder, Des Moines’ prosperous, educated suburbs have moved toward Democrats. The divergence between Decatur County, where DeVore lives, and Dallas County, where Judge lives, has been propelled by the same forces reshaping the rest of the country’s political terrain, with voters increasingly divided along socioeconomic and geographic lines.

The shift toward Democrats in well-off Des Moines suburbs such as Waukee, Clive, Ankeny and Johnston mirrors Democrats’ newfound strength in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Phoenix, which helped Biden win in 2020 and allowed the party to retain control of the Senate in 2022. Republicans’ growing dominance of rural Iowa, meanwhile, resembles changes across the Midwest and the rest of the country that helped Trump win in 2016 and cost Democrats Senate seats in Missouri and North Dakota and House seats in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Both counties lie in the state's third congressional district, which has been a swing district.  Meyer quotes Matt Paul, who worked as state director on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign: 

You really have within the 3rd District the tale of two Iowas. You have one Iowa that is growing, that has new schools, a growing tax base, a strong housing market. And you have an Iowa that has school districts that are struggling to stay open, that have lost their employment base, that are struggling with the challenges and realities of small-town America today.

Also, don't miss this Los Angeles Times story about a Southern California family who moved to Iowa in 2022 because the politics there suited them better.  And this one last month by Jose del Real in the Washington Post, "A Harvest of Memories," out of Chickasaw County, Iowa  It's chock full of community and lack of anonymity.  

Migration from California to rural-ish middle America

That's the topic of a big Los Angeles Times feature in Tuesday's paper.  The headline for Don Lee's story is "Rural towns lure California’s remote workers with cash, child care and other relocation perks."  Here's the lede, which addresses Californians:   

What will it take for you to leave California for Indiana?

Start with $5,000 to $7,500 in relocation cash. If that’s not enough, how about free health insurance for a year, unlimited golf club membership, a seat on the community’s nonprofit board?

* * *  

Across the Hoosier state, dozens of counties and cities are practically stepping over each other in what has become the new competition across the land: attracting the pandemic-enlarged horde of people with remote jobs who no longer feel the need to live in more expensive urban centers like Los Angeles or New York.

The Indiana place featured most prominently in the story is Noblesville, an upscale suburb of Indianapolis and, with a population of 70,000 and ranked the 10th largest city in Indiana, hardly rural at all.  

On the other hand, sometimes the incentives come from more accurately rural places and leverage quintessentially local perks, as in Poplar Bluff, Missouri (population 16,225), which offers stays at vacation cabins in the nearby Ozark mountains, "among 17 incentives valued at $11,000."  Lee's story quotes the city's manager, 

I think we have a lot to offer....Our cost of living is low.  Rural America is attractive to some people. It takes me five minutes to get to work every morning, and that’s if I’m not in a hurry.

So far, however, no one has applied to take advantage of the Poplar Bluff offer.  

Still, broadly speaking, the incentive programs are working:  In just the last two years, some 22,000 people have applied for incentives in Indiana through Indianapolis-based MakeMyMove, which "helps cities across the U.S. recruit remote workers."

Rural vulnerabilities in a changing climate

A number of world-renowned scientists regard climate change as one of, if not the, greatest modern threats to humanity (see here, here, and here). Among other dire consequences, climate change threatens global food production and water supply, access to natural resources, ecosystem health and biodiversity, and physical safety from natural disasters. All of these will surely have deleterious effects on international peace, stability, and human health.

Rural areas, especially those lacking in modern infrastructure, are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This is as true as in the U.S. as it is worldwide. The National Climate Assessment attributes rural vulnerability to a number of geographic and demographic obstacles, such as physical isolation, lack of infrastructure (including emergency response, healthcare, and transportation), lack of political power, limited economic diversity, higher poverty rates, and an aging population.

Sadly, we are already seeing the effects of climate change on rural areas in the United States. In Texas's Rio Grande Valley, drought is approaching disastrous levels. Tornadoes are also getting worse and more frequent across the South and Southeast. 

Rural communities in California are similarly feeling the effects of climate change. Take, for example, the worsening wildfires in 2021 that devastated rural communities across the state but particularly in Northern California and the Sierra Nevadas. As if we needed more extreme weather, just two years after the worst wildfires in California history, an extremely wet winter brought flooding to many areas of rural California like Pajaro, a small town of 3,509 people.

One consequence of climate change that will surely become one of the most pressing issues in the next decades is mass migration driven by climate change. For the United States, this likely means that people living on the coasts, like in New Orleans and the Bay Area, will have to migrate inland to avoid sea level rise.  In fact, NASA estimates that U.S. coastlines could rise 12 inches above their current level by 2050. Climate change could also mean people living in areas prone to natural disasters (like drought in the Southwest and tornadoes in the South) will need to migrate to more hospitable climates.

However, elsewhere in the world, climate change has meant a migration of people from hot and poor rural areas into cities. For example, in the African Sahel, widespread drought and crop failure displaced millions of rural people to coastal cities. Pakistan, a country that has been notoriously hit by extreme weather conditions, has seen more than 680,000 climate refugees relocate to overflowing urban slums. This will only get worse: Pakistan is expected to have nearly 2 million climate refugees by 2050.

So what should be done to alleviate some of the effects that climate change will have on rural areas around the world? The rural communities chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment has some answers.

The assessment, for example, suggests a number of measures to support the adaptive capacity of rural communities. These measures primarily involve money: the assessment highly recommends investing in modern infrastructure, including rural transportation, broadband access, healthcare, and emergency response systems. More education, greater political power, diversification of local economies, and updated regulations and building codes are also key.

Overall, climate change represents a dangerous and imminent threat to rural areas, with catastrophic and irreparable consequences if nothing is done to mitigate its effects. All levels of government need to give rural areas the special consideration they require now. If not, full-scale disaster will decimate rural populations in the U.S. and around the world.

Reader responses to Paul Krugman's "rural rage" column

From New York Times readers in response to the January 27, 2023 column by Paul Krugman, which I wrote about here:

Mr. Krugman’s piece on rural resentment illustrates, in its inadvertent condescension, the very reasons rural people resent big-city elites.

Mr. Krugman details the reasons rural complaints about big government are wrong, noting, for example, that much more federal assistance and more investment funds go to many rural areas than come in through taxes. This misses the deeper issue: Human beings need to be needed, to feel that the work they do matters to the larger community.

For decades now the jobs that help men to feel they are contributing something essential, such as coal mining, manufacturing and farming, have been disappearing. We’ve created an economy that cuts off access to meaningful work, and then told people we’ll “help them” with welfare. Who wouldn’t resent that?

Carol Frances Johnston
Indianapolis

To the Editor:

In my town of approximately 5,000 people, there are at least five farms. Those federal farm subsidies go mostly to corporate farms, leaving family farms the crumbs. Who helps young people who want to farm to buy farmland? Who helps farmers construct decent housing for their migrant workers? Who helps food producers convert to organic farming or to crops that pay them more? 

What if the government reopened the rural hospitals that were closed and subsidized them, staffing them with nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives who know when to send their patients to doctors and when to treat them on-site?

What if it helped locals revitalize Main Street, set up food co-ops when the only supermarket leaves town, and replace the only bank when it closes?

These projects will turn rural residents’ negative opinions of “the government” around.

Andi Weiss Bartczak
Gardiner, N.Y.

To the Editor:

When my kids graduated from a rural high school in upstate New York in the mid 1980s, every classmate with decent academic skills and ambition went away to college, most never to return. They were applauded and encouraged by their teachers and the community.

Those left behind must have had some feelings of resentment. While they are proud of their children’s achievement, their children and grandchildren now live far away. The kids may have picked up more liberal social values and no longer attend church.

Thus, the resentment toward “elites” in a rural area may be less that they feel disrespected, but that the elites have taken their family away. Economic issues are secondary.

William Hussey
New York

To the Editor:

As a product of rural Ohio and a current San Franciscan, I disagree with Paul Krugman’s argument about the disrespect rural Americans feel. It is not a simple manner of which side makes fun of the other.

White rural Americans have felt they have been progressively losing the culture war on the battlefield of our cultural institutions (entertainment, media, education, politics) since at least the 1960s.

These institutions have been used to change or advance views on various issues — race, gender and sexuality, political correctness, to name a few — and this has been seen as an affront to a deeply held identity rooted in faith and family traditions. This affront is where the rage comes from.

Seth Andrzejewski
San Francisco

The Daily Yonder published this response to Krugman, by Claire Carlson. 

Rural China especially vulnerable to "dark COVID winter"

Emily Feng reports for NPR this afternoon.  Here are some excerpts that illustrate the problem: 

As COVID-19 spreads largely unchecked from Beijing to Shanghai, China is bracing for a second surge, jumpstarted by millions of people who are planning holiday travel from cities back to their rural villages, where the health care system is far patchier.

"I really don't think the village doctors, or even the township or county hospital, can handle the increased number of severe cases," says Huan Wang, a researcher at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions. "I think the rural villagers are just left on their own in a dark COVID winter."

As the Lunar New Year approaches, health officials are concerned the celebrations could turn into superspreader events, catching rural systems off guard and driving up infections in a country where natural immunity is nearly non-existent and vaccine hesitancy has remained stubbornly high among the older population.

* * * 

However, the strain China's on countryside is already evident as medicine shortages hit rural pharmacies. On Chinese social media, rural residents have been asking for donations, posting pictures of ransacked pharmacy shelves devoid of fever and pain medication. Some of the medication has been diverted to cities, which were initially hardest-hit by the surge and where supplies first ran out.

"People from the cities have been coming over and buying all of our medicines, or they'll order online and have our pharmacies mail it over to them," says Li Qian, a recent college graduate, who lives in a village in China's southern Jiangsu province. She worries most about her asthmatic grandparents; the nearest hospital, she says, is two hours away.

* * *

Last Thursday, China's national health commission said it was accelerating the expansion of fever treatment clinics – where patients can get quick medical consultations and supplies from a pharmacy — to cover 90% of rural areas to prepare them for the anticipated increase.

The audio has some information not in the transcript, so it's worth a listen.  

Postscript:  Here's a mid-January 2023 story from the Washington Post speculating about the impact Lunar New Year travel will have on the pandemic in China, again because many will travel from urban to rural areas to mark the holiday.

Rural America growing after a decade of population loss

Ken Johnson, University of New Hampshire demographer, has published a policy brief with UNH's Carsey School of Public Policy.  Here's the summary: 

Recent research suggests that the turbulent economic, social, and epidemiological conditions of recent years altered traditional demographic trends in non-metropolitan America. Between 2010 and 2020, nonmetropolitan (rural) America lost population for the first time in history because more people left rural areas than moved to them and because the excess of births over deaths dwindled. Yet, the latest Census Bureau population estimates document renewed population gains in nonmetropolitan America between April 2020 and July 2021. In fact, the rural population gain exceeded that in metropolitan areas, something that is rare in American history (Figure 1). This recent nonmetropolitan population increase occurred because a substantial net migration gain offset the growing excess of deaths over births fostered by COVID-19. In contrast, recent metropolitan population gains were smaller because of less natural increase and smaller net migration gains than between 2010 and 2020. Most of the recent nonmetropolitan population increase accrued to high amenity recreational and retirement areas because net migration gains to these counties accelerated early in the pandemic. Elsewhere in rural America, many areas continued to lose population, but a sizable number of counties had population increases because modest migration gains offset deaths from COVID-19. In many counties with histories of population loss, only sustained net migration gains can provide the demographic lifeline these communities need to stave off depopulation. Whether these nonmetropolitan migration gains will continue in this turbulent era remains to be seen.

This policy brief is based on an article by Johnson in the journal Rural Sociology.  

"Okie" meets Mexican, in the Los Angeles Times

The inimitable Gustavo Arellano writes in today's Los Angeles Times under the headline, "‘Okie’ was a California slur for white people. Why it still packs such an ugly punch."  Here's an excerpt from his column:  

They flooded into California fleeing poverty in their homeland. The public denigrated them as dirty and crime-prone — a threat to the good life.

Authorities harassed the newcomers out of city limits, forcing thousands of families to crowd in enclaves and take low-paying jobs. And when even that couldn’t drive them away, law enforcement set up blockades on the California border.

There are then, of course, the obligatory references to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee." Regarding the book, Arellano explains it was a favorite of his growing up:  

But what speaks to me more than anything about “The Grapes of Wrath” is how the saga of the Joads so closely mirrors that of my family.

The resilience of Ma Joad, the idealism of Tom, the tragedy of Pa, the personal growth of Rose of Sharon — they were my Mexican-born parents, my aunts and uncles, my native-born cousins, my siblings. The book has colored my idea of California ever since. Though it was fictional, Steinbeck based it on the real-life exodus of Dust Bowl refugees, especially those from Oklahoma. California can be cruel to desperate people — yet only in California could the persecuted transform their hard times into dreams they would’ve never found back home.

I especially connect to a slur that the Joads and their real-life contemporaries had to endure: “Okies.”

Californians turned the term — long used as shorthand for an Oklahoma native — into an insult. My family members and other immigrants from south of the border had similar insults thrown at them, including “Mexican” and “paisa,” or hillbilly.

But both groups took the invectives back from the haters and transformed them into markers of cultural pride.

Arellano continues with this revealing missive about the connotations of Okie, which suggest something akin to or synonymous with white trash:

It was in [a] spirit of respect that I used “Okie” in an Aug. 5 obituary for Salvador Avila, the co-founder of the Avila’s El Ranchito Mexican restaurant chain. He opened his first spot in Huntington Park in the 1960s, at a time when the city was “still an Okie” center instead of one of the most Latino cities in the United States, I wrote.

I thought nothing of that line, because it was true. Southeast L.A. County is where many Dust Bowlers settled and where they and their descendants held political power for decades. To merely say “white people” would have downplayed the history, because the Okie experience in Los Angeles was distinct from other white Americans in the region like, say, Midwesterners or Southerners.

Almost as soon as I published my piece, the critiques came in.

Teri O’Rourke of Palm Desert, whose grandparents left Oklahoma in the 1930s, said my use of “Okie” brought back memories of “the people in the ‘50s and ‘60s who thought Okies were stupid and lazy.”

Karen Hamstrom claimed “Okie” was “extremely offensive language” that was beneath me.

“While the Depression-era generation that endured those taunts may be mostly gone, those words are still used with scorn and derision to imply filth, stupidity, and a shallow gene pool,” she wrote. “Given how quickly you take offense to words and actions you deem discriminatory to your culture, I expect better from you.”

Danny Esparza viewed “Okie” as a “bitter descriptive” and claimed Huntington Park in its white heyday “was a beautiful [thriving] city with a financially thriving downtown area. People came from all around to shop there. To use your racist vehemence, it is now a Mex trash pit.”

Nothing like self-hating Latinos to brighten your day.

Of course, you don't want to miss the rest of this Arellano column. 

A prior blog post about Okies and the Dust Bowl era is here, and others touching on these topics are here, here, and here.  

Rural gentrification in far northern California: where climate change and covid migration converged

Ok, I admit I'm borrowing part of that headline from this 2021 Bloomberg story about Humboldt County, California.  But the phenomenon (along with the link) were brought to my attention today when I saw Hailey Branson-Potts' Los Angeles Times piece on the Samoa Peninsula, just west of Eureka, the county seat of Humboldt County, California.  Here's an excerpt: 

[T]he month of September rolled in with a chill here on the Samoa Peninsula — one of the coldest places in California in these waning days of summer.

“We have our natural air conditioning here. If you can put up with a little morning fog and drizzle and overcast sky, it’s not too bad,” said Doug Boushey, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Eureka.

The Pacific Ocean has a moderating effect that Boushey calls a “cool, moist pump.”

When it is hot inland, that warm, thinner air rises in the atmosphere, and cold marine air is sucked in, like a vacuum, to fill the void, Boushey said. The warmer air aloft acts “like a lid,” trapping the heavier, cooler air, which can’t easily flow over mountains.

In Eureka, a mile east across the bay from the peninsula, the hottest temperature ever recorded is 87 degrees, Boushey said. The mercury hit that number in 1993, 2017, and 2020.

It’s a “wimpy record” as far as heat goes, he acknowledged.

With the heat dome firmly in place in parts elsewhere, the average highs around Eureka over the next week are in the mid-60s, Boushey said.

That’s even cooler than the famously frigid summer in a city five hours south: San Francisco. A high of around 79 is forecast there over Labor Day weekend.

While the overwhelming majority of U.S. cities have had shorter, hotter winters over the last 50 years because of climate change, Eureka is one of the very few to buck the trend, with its winters becoming slightly colder, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit research group.

Branson-Potts notes that the weather is a factor in the recent rise in Eureka;s housing costs, but clearly it is only one factor in a record-breaking 24% rise in prices over the prior year.  As suggested by the Bloomberg piece, part of that was covid migration, when lots of folks looked to leave cities and find more space in "the country."  That said, I know two families who not long ago moved to Eureka to avoid Central Valley heat.  Plus, I assume the designation of Cal State Humboldt as the latest Cal Poly is also driving up demand.  Indeed, that designation and anticipated accompanying growth also recently drove the university to pay well above market rate for a strategically located piece of property in neighboring Arcata. 

Prior posts about this part of far northern California are here (including several from 2011, when a student in my Law and Rural Livelihoods class had grown up in Humboldt).  As you'll gather from these, Humboldt County is part of the so-called Emerald Triangle, a notorious pot-growing region.  But that part of the region's economy has suffered badly since marijuana cultivation was legalized--and came to be highly regulated.  

Carsey: Growing Racial Diversity in Rural America

The Carsey School of Public Policy (University of New Hampshire) has published a new brief by Kenneth Johnson and Daniel Lichter titled "Growing Racial Diversity in Rural America: Results from the 2020 Census."  Here's the abstract: 

Many rural areas have been hit hard over the past decade by globalization, a rapidly changing U.S. economy, job instability, and high unemployment. The net result has been migration losses and low fertility. As a result, only about a third of nonmetropolitan (rural) counties gained population between 2010 and 2020. The other two-thirds lost population. In some cases, the losses were modest, but nearly one in three rural counties have experienced chronic population decline. And, for the first time ever, rural America as a whole lost population between 2010 and 2020. Recent 2020 Census data revealed that nonmetropolitan counties declined by 288,000 people (or 0.6 percent) between 2010 and 2020, after growing by 3.4 percent during the previous decade. Today, there are 46 million rural residents, which is just 14 percent of the U.S. total. This is the smallest percentage of the population to reside in rural areas in U.S. history.

Though population declines were widespread, rural America became more racially and ethnically diverse over the past decade. Rural population decline occurred in tandem with growing rural diversity. As we show in this report, the growing diversity of the nonmetropolitan population reflects differential patterns of demographic change among the numerous racial and ethnic sub-groups in rural America.

The move from urban to rural California as a cost-saving, survival measure

This story appeared in the Los Angeles Times this week under the headline, "L.A. sank them into debt. Will this family find a better life in rural California?"  It is the story of immigrants from Mexico who left  Los Angeles for Huron, population 6,754, in the Central Valley.  They made the move, in part, because they were not able to get ahead and, in fact, were sinking further into debt.  Here's an excerpt from Alejandra Reyes-Velarde's poignant story:  

While some urban dwellers fled to less crowded regions during the pandemic, working-class immigrants have largely stayed put, tied to jobs that required them to show up in person, as well as the extensive social networks of the big city.

Puebla, 44, is among the relatively few who have left, turning away from Los Angeles, long a beacon for immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

People questioned the decision. What would the kids do for fun? They might not have the same shot at success.

But Puebla and her husband decided that Huron held more opportunity.

* * * 

For a decade, Puebla’s family got by mostly on her husband’s salary. She managed their apartment building in exchange for cheaper rent — $1,000 instead of $1,700 for a similar two-bedroom unit.

The rent inched higher, along with gas.

The pandemic pushed them closer to the edge. With repairs inside apartments put off to avoid transmitting the virus, Cabrera’s hours were cut. Their debt skyrocketed to more than $25,000.

The kids — three boys and a girl, ages 9 to 17— grew restless and bored with Zoom school and few chances to leave the house. Puebla did what she could to entertain them.

Recently, more homeless people were walking through the neighborhood. There was an uptick in shootings, and two cars were set ablaze.

Eliazer Cabrera, Puebla's husband, got an offer to manage an apartment complex in Huron; they had previously visited the area for quail hunting.    

The family didn’t hesitate. Puebla believed the job offer was a sign from God. The apartment complex was just a few years old, and they would get a three-bedroom unit at no cost.

The rest of the story is about how things went after the move.  Turns out, the grass was not necessarily greener in Huron.  Read this excellent story for the details, including some common complaints about rural living.  Particularly striking to me are the complaints about the Huron and other Fresno County schools--and details about how the cost of travel for necessities drives up the overall cost of living in a rural places.  

Other posts about (or at least mentioning) Huron, California are here.        

Coronavirus in rural America (Part CLXXVII): New Yorkers who decamped to rural places (mostly) return to the city

The New York Times reports today on New York City residents who fled to the country during the pandemic and are now mostly returning to the city.  The headline for Julie Lasky's feature is "They Fled for Greener Pastures, and There Were Weeds."  Here's the humorous lead anecdote:  

For Andrew Joseph, the unexpected challenge of rural living was summed up in a single word: beavers. Mr. Joseph was enchanted by baby beavers swimming in the brook on his four-acre property in the town of Saugerties, N.Y., [population 19,482, in the Hudson Valley] where he and his partner, Paul Pearson, have been sheltering since March 2020.

“I quickly learned that they’re horrible, nasty creatures that wreak havoc and destruction,” said Mr. Joseph, the head of a Manhattan public relations firm who still maintains a home in Harlem. The beavers dammed the brook in three places, creating a swamp behind the house, and built a den that is “the size of a small van.”

Mr. Joseph, 51, applied for a permit to remove the animals and awaited a visit from a beaver trapper. After a preliminary visit, he never showed up again, though a bear did.

Then one night the couple heard gunshots from a neighbor’s property, and, lo, the beavers were gone.

Here's another excerpt, this one focusing on what the data tell us about population movement:

According to a report published in November by the New York State comptroller based on United States Postal Service change-of-address forms, a trend in migration from New York City following the March 2020 lockdown had reversed itself as of July 2021, motivated by the reopening of schools, offices and arts and entertainment offerings.

There are more humorous anecdotes, this one about Tara Silberberg, who moved with her family from Brooklyn to Gallatin, population 1,668, also in the Hudson Valley, early in the pandemic:

Having been raised in rural western Massachusetts, where her parents retreated [from Brooklyn] after a horrific 1973 acid attack left a Park Slope child blind, Ms. Silberberg said she speaks two languages: country and city. “I’m very direct and the people on my board appreciate that about me. In the country, there’s a lot of couching and people trying to say something and not wanting to be aggressive about it.”

She is also schooled in the sometimes-operatic inconveniences of rural life. In the first year of her family’s Massachusetts sojourn, the 1930s gravity-fed water system broke “and nobody knew how to fix it and we didn’t have water for a year,” she recalled. “I understood that the country doesn’t mean it’s always picking daisies.”

Some transplants came to realize that urban density, the close contact with fellow citizens that seemed so threatening in a time of pestilence, was the first thing they missed.

And here's yet another, focusing on the "harsh demands" made by "big rural parcels":  

“I hurt my back over two years ago when I did weed whacking, one of the perils of country life,” said Annette Schaich, 58.

Ms. Schaich, a New York-based marketing consultant in the design industry, has spent the pandemic in a southern New Hampshire farmhouse she shares with her husband, Tony Conway, 71, an artist who grew up and was educated in the state. The couple are stewards of 20 acres, which has claimed a bit of their health. “Tony fell from a ladder when he was renovating the barn and broke his knee,” Ms. Schaich said. She added that there is an excellent hospital in the area.

And the presence of that excellent hospital sets it apart from other rural locales, where the transplants to rural places found themselves missing all sorts of services.   

Read the whole story.  Among other things, you'll find a mention of New Yorker--or urbanite--as identity. 

Here's a related post--now more than a decade old--by a student, "The uninformative rural mystique."  

Climate change is deterring farmworkers from following the harvest to the Pacific Northwest

Priscella Vega reports for the Los Angeles Times on the movement of farm workers between California and the Pacific Northwest--in particular how migration north is being diminished because heat in Washington and Oregon are making those less desirable places for workers to be.  An excerpt quoting a few experts follows: 

Edward Taylor, distinguished professor at UC Davis’ Agriculture and Resource Economics department, said to his knowledge there isn’t a study that statistically links harvest migration to extreme heat in the Pacific Northwest. But he found it interesting and worth studying because whatever makes migration less attractive makes people migrate less.

Taylor conducted research in Mexico that showed extreme heat “significantly” drove migration out of rural communities and into other parts of Mexico and the United States.

“I can imagine in this context that anything would make farm work less pleasant than it already is,” said Taylor, who also serves as director of the Center on Rural Economies of the Americas and Pacific Rim at UC Davis. “It would simply compound this big picture we see happening out there. Fewer farmworkers. Less and less are willing to migrate to follow the crop.”

“We can ban pesticides, but we can’t ban hot weather,” said Dr. Marc Schenker, distinguished professor emeritus of public health sciences and medicine at UC Davis and founding director of the Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety. “We can’t regulate Mother Nature.”

But the heart of Vega's piece is the story of Enedina Ventura, a farmworker, and her family. She is based in Fresno, but made the seasonal journey to Oregon for years.  

Here's an NPR report from September, 2021, about the impact of heat on farmworkers in California.  Here's a story about the impact of climate change in Oregon. 

On migration from urban to rural, from the coasts to the heartland

Lots of folks left city life for "country life" (by one definition or another) during the pandemic, as noted in this recent feature in the Los Angeles Times about Angelenos decamping to the high desert area around Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley in the Inland Empire.   Now comes another LA Times story about Angelenos (and folks in cities like Denver) on the move, but now the city folks are moving farther afield, to places like Nebraska and Iowa.  Don Lee reports.  Here's an excerpt about the trend, which Lee frames as a reversal of the rural brain drain:

For generations of young people reared in the nation’s heartland, it has been almost a rite of passage: Grow up in a small town, finish school, head out for the opportunities of cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. It’s been a major factor in the aging populations and declining economies of rural communities.

But the pandemic may be reversing — or at least slowing — that trend as many people reassess their priorities. Just as critically, the COVID-19 health crisis has opened up more telework opportunities, making life more feasible for those wanting to live in smaller states and towns.

Smaller cities such as Topeka, Kan., and Stillwater, Okla., are wasting no time capitalizing on new employment prospects, offering thousands of dollars in cash for new residents moving into their areas for work.

Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia and other states have launched an assortment of grants and other inducements aimed at enticing people to work there, especially in rural communities. 

Reminds me of this piece from The Conversation last week (which I blogged about a few days ago), where the focus was on climate change, rather than the pandemic, as the migration driver.  The headline there, "How ‘managed retreat’ from climate change could revitalize rural America: Revisiting the Homestead Act," and the authors are urbanists based in Toronto and New York, Hillary A. Brown and Daniel R. Brooks.  Here's a related story from the Daily Yonder a few days ago. 

California migration patterns driving rural(ish) gentrification and, perhaps slowly, changes in local politics

The Los Angeles Times reported a few days ago under the headline, "Wealth, class and remote work shape California's new boomtowns, as people flee big cities," and the focus of the story is El Dorado County, California (population 181,058)--specifically the planned (but unincorporated) community of El Dorado Hills, population 42,000.  

Among the new booming counties is El Dorado, the birthplace of the California Gold Rush, which has absorbed a flood of Bay Area transplants who, in search of affordable homes, well-rated schools and access to the outdoors, have packed up their U-Hauls and headed northeast.

“It’s really just an opportunity for people who have felt pent up and squeezed in the Bay Area and felt handcuffed that they had to stay there,” said Jon Yoffie, a real estate agent in El Dorado Hills.

Many recent arrivals are young families and retirees looking for more land or following their adult children.

* * * 

El Dorado County has held on to its small-town vibe, residents say, but newcomers are making it both more expensive and more diverse.

Bill Roby, 67, and his husband James moved to El Dorado County from the Bay Area in 2005, where they settled on six acres in Shingle Springs, a rural part of the county with larger plots and open space.

“It’s a very rural environment where I can’t even see my neighbor’s home,” said Roby, who, like the majority of El Dorado County residents, lives outside of the two incorporated cities of Placerville and South Lake Tahoe.

Before moving, Roby, who worked as an operations manager for a nonprofit organization, felt that he was always competing for room. Now the executive director of the ‎El Dorado Community Foundation, Roby said he has seen not only a dramatic surge in the number of people migrating to the region since 2020, but also a heightened degree of civic engagement. In the last year, Roby said, there has been “a lot of scrutiny” over local positions, such as who is being chosen as the commissioner of a Board of Supervisors committee.“People have time, they are paying attention and they’re raising ideological concerns,” he said. “I think that encapsulates the big conversation going on in El Dorado County: Where does the community see itself?”

Though he hasn’t experienced animosity, Roby has heard some locals say that they want to maintain their region’s more conservative, underdeveloped aura, and fear that newcomers are changing that character. Some 41% of active voters in El Dorado County are Republicans, according to 2020 data from the county’s election department, while 31% are Democrats. Another 21% are registered with no party preference.

“Out of my three neighbors, two have moved because they felt the county was becoming too liberal,” Roby said.

Here's a prior post about sprawl in El Dorado County.  And a few other posts that are revealing about the county's politics are here, here, and here.   Note the "Preserve our Rural Lifestyle" heading in this El Dorado County post, from 2008.

Rural China garners NYT front-page story about the nation's costly investment in persistent, deep poverty

Keith Bradsher reports under the headline, "Jobs, Houses and Cows: China’s Costly Drive to Erase Extreme Poverty."  The subhead: "China has spent heavily to help its poorest citizens, an approach that few developing countries can afford and even Beijing may struggle to sustain."

Here's the lede:  

JIEYUAN VILLAGE, China — When the Chinese government offered free cows to farmers in Jieyuan, villagers in the remote mountain community were skeptical. They worried officials would ask them to return the cattle later, along with any calves they managed to raise.

But the farmers kept the cows, and the money they brought. Others received small flocks of sheep. Government workers also paved a road into the town, built new houses for the village’s poorest residents and repurposed an old school as a community center.

And here are the implications for a country where "a migrant worker in a coastal factory city can earn as much in a month as a Gansu farmer earns in a year":  

The village of Jieyuan is one of many successes of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious pledge to eradicate abject rural poverty by the end of 2020. In just five years, China says it has lifted from extreme poverty over 50 million farmers left behind by breakneck economic growth in cities.

But the village, one of six in Gansu visited by The New York Times without government oversight, is also a testament to the considerable cost of the ruling Communist Party’s approach to poverty alleviation. That approach has relied on massive, possibly unsustainable subsidies to create jobs and build better housing.

The high price and lack of sustainability are clues to why the United States government is unlikely to make a major investment of this sort, if not in cows, even in housing and jobs.  

The story quotes Martin Raiser, the World Bank's country director for China, 

We’re pretty sure China’s eradication of absolute poverty in rural areas has been successful — given the resources mobilized, we are less sure it is sustainable or cost effective.

The total cost of the program, thus far, is $700 billion in both loans and grants, over five years.  And that doesn't count "large donations by state-owned enterprises like State Grid, a power transmission giant, which put $120 billion into rural electricity upgrades and assigned more than 7,000 employees to work on poverty alleviation projects."

Here's more on what's happening in some rural reaches of China's Gansu province, with quotes from various residents: 

According to the government’s complicated criteria for determining eligibility for aid, anyone who owned a car, had more than $4,600 in assets or had a new or recently rebuilt house was excluded. People hovering just above the government’s poverty line continue to struggle to make ends meet, but are often denied help with housing or other benefits.

* * *

The party’s campaign-style approach also fails to tackle deep-seated problems that disproportionately hurt the poor, including the cost of health care and other gaping holes in China’s emerging social safety net. Villages provide limited health insurance — only 17 percent of the cost of Mr. Jia’s arthritis medicine is covered, for example. Hefty medical bills can ruin families.

* * *

Despite the challenges, the poverty relief program may have a long-term political benefit that helps to ensure some of it survives. Gratitude for the program seems to be reinforcing the political power of the party in rural areas.

In Youfang, Mr. Zhang was quick to praise not just the poverty program but also Mr. Xi, comparing him to Mao.

“It is good for the country to have Xi Jinping,” he said, “and the national policy is good.”

That's an interesting twist since neither major party in the United States seems to care much about the rural vote, though one party certainly pays more lip service than the other to rural voters.  

By the way, the print headline for this story, which appeared below the fold, was different, "Free Cows?  China Wages War on Rural Poverty."    That language is reminiscent of LBJ's "War on Poverty" from the 1960s. 

Coronavirus in rural America (Part XXXXIII): Native Americans

I've written previously about coronavirus impacts on the Navajo Nation, and I'm re-visiting the topic today because of major media coverage by both the New York Times and Washington Post.  Some of that coverage, especially from the NYT, goes beyond the Navajo to discuss impacts on a wide range of tribes across the United States.  Both stories note delays in getting tribes the $8 million promised them in the CARES Act from late March, and like this story from Medium, these reports are attuned to the long history of the federal government neglecting its commitment to Native concerns.  

Simon Romero and Jack Healy report for the NYT from Albuquerque, with a dual focus on the closure of casinos, a huge source of tribal revenue, and the illness and death toll in Indian Country.  Here's an excerpt that provides an overview primarily of the latter:

Across Indian Country, more than 5,200 cases have been confirmed in communities from Arizona to Minnesota — a number that might seem small compared with those in major urban centers in New York and Los Angeles, but which in many cases represents significant local clusters that are challenging the limited resources of tribal clinics and rural hospitals.

On reservations in the Dakotas and Montana where good housing is scarce, extended families have been forced to shelter together in tiny homes with no clean water and no internet. On the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, the Northern Arapaho Tribe opened its casino as a quarantine site.

And here's more on the magnitude of the impact that casino closures are having on tribes:

In an interview, the Harvard scholar Joseph Kalt likened the far-reaching devastation caused by shutdowns of tribal businesses around the country this year to the demise of the bison herds in the 19th century and the contentious attempt in the 1950s to disband tribes and relocate Native Americans to cities.

Kalt, a co-director of Harvard's Project on American Indian Development, comments:

You’d have to go back to the 50s for something of this magnitude.  

Robert Klemko reports for the Washington Post from Crystal, New Mexico, population 311, in the Navajo nation.  His story is headlined, "Coronavirus has been devastating to the Navajo Nation, and help for a complex fight has been slow," and he writes:

If the novel coronavirus has been cruel to America, it has been particularly cruel here, on a desert Native American reservation that maybe has never felt more alone than during this pandemic. There's a lack of running water, medical infrastructure, Internet access, information and adequate housing. And as of Wednesday, as the Navajo tried desperately to take care of themselves, the promised help from the U.S. government had, as usual, not yet arrived.

Prior posts touching on the coronavirus and Native issues are here and here.  Coverage of the death from COVID-19 of a prominent young Navajo leader, Valentina Blackhorse, is here and was also featured on NPR's weekend edition about 10 days ago  Other posts out of New Mexico are here and here.

And don't miss this story out of Farmington, New Mexico also in today's New York Times.  "For a City Already in a ‘Death Spiral,’ What’s After Lockdown?" is by Nicholas Casey.  Farmington, population 45,877, is in the same corner of the state as the Navajo nation, right in the so-called four-corners area of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.  The mayor of Farmington, which voted for Trump by a margin of 2 to 1, has resisted the (Democratic) governor's orders, saying they created an economic emergency.  Casey quotes Democrat Bill Richardson, who previously represented this corner of New Mexico in Congress:

The welfare of the people over the economy has been a winning issue — but that’s now starting to fray.  You can’t defy the law, but I can understand the pain of small towns. These are good people.

Richardson says he believes "the challenge of this moment is pushing rural voters even further away from Democrats."

Coronavirus in rural America (Part IV): California

The Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee both ran stories yesterday about the implications of the coronavirus for rural California.  Both discussed health care issues (the subject of recent posts here and here), but health care access in rural parts of the Golden State was the focus of the Bee story by Ryan Sabalow and Jason Pohl.  The headline proclaims the bad news bluntly:  "California’s rural hospitals can’t handle a coronavirus wave. ‘People will die,’ doctor warns."

Mammoth Hospital’s chief medical officer Dr. Craig Burrows didn’t hold back as he urged the 8,234 people living in his Sierra ski-resort town to stay home and avoid crowds. 

“Try to imagine 100 people getting sick all at once tomorrow,” Burrows said in an unscripted video message the Mono County hospital posted on YouTube. “If that happens, our small hospital, our small community, will be completely overwhelmed and people will die. 

“Let me say that again: People. Will. Die.”

Mammoth Hospital has 17 beds. If COVID-19 sweeps through that community, there won’t be room to treat everyone and doctors will have to make hard choices. It’s a grim reality that Mammoth shares with 33 other federally designated “Critical Access Hospitals” in California that have 25 or fewer beds.

The story goes on to list many of those other 33 "Critical Access Hospitals" in the Golden State.  They are in places like Fortuna (Humboldt County), Fall River Mills (Shasta County), Surprise Valley (Modoc County), Lone Pine (Inyo County), Tehachapi (Kern County) and Gridley (Butte County).  Here's more of the Bee story:

In 2015, officials from across California conducted a “tabletop exercise” designed to simulate the impacts of a major flu pandemic. Local emergency planners were given various projections of how many people would get sick and die and how many ventilation machines each county has to keep severely ill patients breathing. 

The results were sobering for Shasta County (population 180,000) and its county seat Redding, a regional medical hub: Anywhere between 39 and 445 people would need ventilators. 

State figures show that Shasta County hospitals have 86 ICU beds equipped with ventilators, including beds for newborns. Most beds are in Redding, home to two regional hospitals that receive patients from across the rural north state. 

The numbers are even bleaker at the three hospitals along the foggy north coast in Humboldt County, population 136,754, said Rex Bohn, a county supervisor. 

“We’re very fortunate (the hospitals) all work together really well, but with that, I think we have a total of maybe 22 ICU beds and 250 beds total,” Bohn said. “So if it comes time for us to push that red button (and request help from regional hospitals) … there’s no guarantee they’re going to answer because they’re already stretched.” 

He said the county is trying to prepare by renting rooms at local motels to house and isolate COVID-19 patients who don’t require critical care.

As with my last "health" post re corona virus, this one demonstrates the relationship between rural and urban, with the former at the mercy of the latter.  That's a reversal of the normal state of affairs, when urban folks rely on rural folks--for food, minerals, fish, timber and other products of rural-based extractive industries.

The Los Angles Times story also mentions Mammoth Lakes, but in this case as a destination urban folks are escaping to as they seek to avoid the densely populated areas where coronavirus is quickly spreading.  Here's the paragraph most salient to what is happening in the Eastern Sierra:

In Mammoth Lakes, a small Eastern Sierra town that survives primarily on skiing at Mammoth Mountain, the tourism board this week told nonresidents to keep out. “The reason is simple,” the board’s website announced. “As a small, remote mountain community our healthcare facilities lack the capacity to handle a widespread outbreak of COVID-19.” 

Another in-demand "rural" location (well, I'd say a form of rural gentrification) is Joshua Tree, in the Mohave Desert of San Bernardino County.  Louis Sahagun writes:

As the coronavirus pandemic tightens its grip on California’s largest cities, some residents are fleeing urban sprawl and seeking shelter in isolated communities in the Mojave Desert or rugged Sierra Nevada. Their hope, they say, is to avoid possible public unrest and limit their exposure to the virus. 

These new urban immigrants are not entirely welcome, however. Locals fear their arrival could overwhelm the public health systems of small towns already struggling to cope with the growing crisis, and public health officials worry the movement will lead to greater spread of the highly contagious virus. 

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Thursday night that residents were forbidden from moving to or from vacation homes outside the city, along with a number of other health and safety restrictions aimed at fighting contagion. 

And that will stem the flow of people from urban to rural, and vice versa.  No doubt, this will not be the last post in this series on coronavirus' impacts on rural places and on the relationship between rural and urban.

P.S.  The story discussed above re: California's rural hospitals is the top item in Sacramento Bee print edition on the morning of March 24, 2020. 

Also from the Sacramento Bee online as of March 24, 2020:  "California Tourist Towns Demand Outsiders Stay Home:  'Someone is going to get shot.'"  Again Ryan Sabalow and Jason Pohl report, including from Mono County, population 14,168.