Agritourism keeping more small farms out of the red

A few years ago, the New York Times ran a travel feature on agritourism in Europe. Yesterday, it ran a business feature on agritourism in the United States. It's no secret that those who own and run small farms have typically relied on both farm and off-farm income to make ends meet. Now, however, more farms are relying on a second type of farm revenue: fees paid by tourists, many who want to see and teach their children where food comes from. William Neuman summarizes the phenomenon, writing from Santa Margarita, California.

[I]ncreasingly farmers are eking more money out of the land in ways beyond the traditional route of planting crops and raising livestock. Some have opened bed-and-breakfasts, often known as farm stays, that draw guests eager to get a taste of rural living. Others operate corn mazes — now jazzed up with modern fillips like maps on cellphones — that often turn into seasonal amusements, with rope courses and zip lines. Ranchers open their land to hunters or bring in guests to ride horses, dude ranch style.

Neuman notes that the USDA is promoting agritourism, as through grants like the one that went to an Oregon entrepreneur who established the website Farm Stay U.S. The USDA also tracks such enterprises and others aspects of farming as a business in its Census of Agriculture. The Census indicates that California is among the leaders in agritourism (as it is in agriculture more broadly), with about 700 farms averaging more than $50K/year in such revenue.

The USDA estimated that in 2007, 23,000 farms in the United States engaged in some aspect of agritourism, which generated an average of $23,400 in income. The average agritourism income in the 2002 Census was only $7,200, although more farms reported participating in such enterprises then.

Read other posts about agritourism here.

Budget cuts hurt state parks--and rural economies

This story about state park budget cuts appeared in the New York Times earlier this week. The dateline is Anacortes, Washington, population 16,533, home of Deception Pass State Park, which is one of a number of Washington State parks that will begin charging entrance fees on July 1. The story by William Yardley also discusses cuts to and closures of state parks in other states, including California, Ohio, Idaho, New York, Arizona and Florida. Here's an excerpt about an Ohio plan to allow energy exploration in the state's parks:

The resignation some feel about the Ohio plan is rooted in a broader sense nationwide that the status of parks has permanently changed, that parks officials cannot passively presume that lawmakers, Democrat or Republican, will rescue them. Yet some officials also worry that rising fees, rising gas prices and a need to “market” parks to people who will spend money will keep those with lower incomes from enjoying public lands.

“We’re catering more to Middle America, to middle-class recreationists, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” said Richard Just, the chief planner at the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation and immediate past president of National Association of Recreation Resource Planners.

I thought these comments about class were, well, interesting--in part because people don't tend to acknowledge the existence of class. Of course, "middle class" is a pretty amorphous category. Growing up, I thought state and national parks were appealing, but for the affluent--and out of my family's reach, in part because we didn't take vacations at all. Now I am a big "consumer" of such parks, and I do like to think of myself as middle class. So, sadly, Mr. Just may be correct. The parks were perhaps never very accessible to those with lower incomes, never mind the onset of entrance fees.

This brings me to another observation: middle class park goers may also represent wealth transfers from the urban places where many (most?) of them live to the rural locales of many state parks. The story doesn't discuss the impact of park closures and entrance fees on the areas surrounding the parks--the places where tourists purchase fuel, camping supplies, food, lodging, and other recreation activities. Many of these places are rural by one definition or another. For example, one of the impacted parks is Farragut State Park in Idaho, about 30 miles from Metropolitan Coeur d'Alene, in Kootenai County. But thinking in terms of this Idaho park also points up another characteristic associated with some rural areas, especially those that are home to parks: they are in "amenity rich" locales, which already fare better economically than most other rural areas.

Environmentalists theaten to sue Central Valley farmers

Alex Breitler writes in the Record of a decades-long dispute over selenium run-off into the San Joaquin River:

Growers say great progress already has been made in decreasing the amount of toxic selenium that drains from their lands and into the San Joaquin River, which flows downstream past Stockton. Scientists have found deformities in fish, which have been linked to selenium. Last year, regulators gave them an extension of nearly 10 years to finish meeting a standard established in 1996.

Displeased with that delay, a coalition of advocacy groups filed papers Tuesday claiming the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority need federal permits for the farmers' runoff and have failed to acquire them. The environmentalists warned they intend to sue within 60 days.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part LXXXI): Community food room to use "old jail"

Finally, the "old jail" in Newton County has found a use. I've written a lot about the county's travails regarding the century-old jail, such as here, here and here. Now, the May 18, 2011 issue of the Newton County Times reports that the Newton County Food Room will relocate into the historic jail. "An army of volunteers were at work scrubbing and painting walls in the main floor of the old jail Monday morning, May 16." A donor gave the supplies to clean up the jail.

Because the building is on the National Register of Historic Places, its exterior must be maintained, but the interior has been remodeled a number of times over the years. The story states:

The front reception area will be maintained except for the third class partition between the public and the former dispatcher's desk has been removed. Behind it in the front office is where most of the commonly distributed foods will be stored. Refrigerators and freezers will be moved into rooms along the east side of the building and the cells in the back of the building will serve as the warehouse for food stocks.

The food room serves about 300 families each month. The charitable organization, sponsored by the county's churches, will not be paying rent to the county, but it will pay utilities.

Another natural disaster in rural America: Arizona wildfires

As noted in other recent posts, a theme of media commentary on rural natural disasters ("but why would anyone live there in the first place?") is inter-generational attachment to place. Indeed, once again, a New York Times reporter seems respectful of this rural phenomenon. Marc Lacey reports on the Wallow fire, dateline Eagar, Arizona, population 4,317, in east-central Arizona, in the White Mountains/Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. Here's an excerpt regarding some residents' refusal to evacuate, in some cases because they hope to protect their homes, businesses and livestock:

The authorities called the holdouts foolhardy and required them to sign liability waivers, but did not try to force them out.

“They have a constitutional right to stay on their property,” said Brannon Eagar, chief deputy of the Apache County Sheriff’s Department, who acknowledged being frustrated by those who stay behind. “We will not go in and remove people, but we will not be liable for their safety.”

Deputy Eagar, whose great-great-grandfather founded this town, said he understood people’s attachment to the area. “Most of the people who live here have lived here for a long time,” he said.

“One of the reasons we live here is because of this beautiful mountain,” he added. “It tears you up to see what’s happening.”

Deputy Eagar fought back tears as he addressed residents at a community meeting on Monday night, moved by the despair of his neighbors and their camaraderie, too. The residents in the audience, many of whom had watched him grow up, clapped loudly.

Tipster tricks media, as much as rural Texas law enforcement

I was galvanized when a New York Times news alert landed in my inbox about 3:45 this afternoon. It was headlined "Up to 30 Dismembered Bodies Found near Houston, Reuters Reports." The New York Times is always so circumspect about breaking news that I figured there was something to the report or this would not have appeared on its website, let alone in an email announcement. I was especially intrigued by the blurb's mention that the bodies had been found in a rural area, so I searched around the web for more information, and I found reports in UK newspapers and in a few Houston-area sources--but really little detail beyond reports that all bodies were children and that police had requested a search warrant of the house near the reported mass grave. Thinking about it now, I should have realized that something was wrong when the stories reported that police were seeking a search warrant for a nearby farm house based on the presence of blood. After all, if a mass grave containing 30 bodies were on the premises, would police have to wait to get a search warrant for the house?

In any event, within an hour of the initial report, the New York Times released an email stating, "Sheriff's Office Has Not Found Bodies at Site of Reported Graves, Houston Chronicle Says." The story reports:

Deputies who swarmed a rural Texas neighborhood Tuesday to search a farmhouse where a person claiming to be a psychic told officials multiple bodies were buried found no evidence of even a single homicide, a sheriff's official says.

Liberty County Sheriff's Capt. Rex Evans said there was no indication of bodies being anywhere on the property about 70 miles northeast of Houston. Officials ended their search Tuesday night and went home, with the focus of the investigation now turning to the tipster who led local law enforcement and FBI agents to the home.

The mass grave was said to have been between Daisetta, population 998, and Hardin, population 696. Both are in Liberty County, population 74,941, which is part of the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown Metropolitan Area.

Special law enforcement unit combats cattle rustling in Texas

Dan Barry reports in yesterday's New York Times of the special rangers for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Barry calls this unit "part industry advocate, part law enforcement agency," and he tells how the white-hatted rangers caught a recent cattle rustler after a spate of major thefts (more than a dozen cattle each time) in east and south Texas. This is a group of law enforcement officers specializing in the cattle business, so the rangers know when rustlers know the business, too. Indeed, a knowledgeable rustler--a cattle whisperer, Barry calls him--was the culprit they arrested for the thefts this spring. The defendant in this case, from a cattle raising family himself, had been busted by the rangers less than a decade ago for another spate of cattle thefts.

The rangers appear to be a public-private hybrid, financed by the Cattle Raisers Association but "with the power of arrest, all wearing guns and white hats." Barry explains that the "the 15,000-member cattle raisers association, founded in 1877 by a band of rustler-weary ranchers, has 29 special rangers" who use "sophisticated databases (including a file of more than 100,000 registered brands) and plain common sense (checking cow pies for tire tracks)," to "investigate thefts of livestock and property and inspect millions of cattle a year." In the past ten years, they have "investigated more than 11,000 cases of livestock-related thefts, and recovered or accounted for more than 37,500 head of cattle."

The story's dateline is Groesbeck, Texas, population 4,304.

"Crash tax" retained in nonmetropolitan California

The Sacramento Bee reported today that, while Sacramento and Roseville have recently rescinded so-called crash taxes, some smaller municipalities in central and northern California have retained them. Here's an excerpt:

Sacramento and Roseville killed "crash taxes" earlier this year amid political push-back, but small towns and rural fire districts across the region still have the controversial emergency-recovery fees in place.

Fire departments, especially those along the Interstate 80 and Highway 50 corridors, continue to bill out-of-town motorists when crews respond to accidents.

Some fire officials say the fees, which range from about $400 to $2,500, are an important source of extra income in tough times and haven't resulted in political strife, as they did in Sacramento.

Critics in the capital said the fees targeting out-of-towners would hurt business and tourism, and had angered neighboring localities.

But a number of area fire districts have no plans to eliminate them.

Among the municipalities and fire districts collecting the tax: Newcastle and Woodland. Newcastle is a Census Designated Place but without a population figure on the U.S. Census Bureau's American FactFinder website. Woodland is much larger, the county seat of Yolo County, with a population of 53,069. Both are part of the greater Sacramento metropolitan area.

I wonder if this means that smaller municipalities are even more desperate for revenue than large ones. They also seem less concerned that these fees might put a damper on business.

Law and Order in the Ozarks (Part LXXX): Lawsuit filed to stop "fracking" in Ozark National Forest

The May 25, 2011 issue of the Newton County Times reports on a lawsuit filed in federal court by an attorney in Heber Springs, Arkansas, population 7,117, seeking to stop gas drilling by hydraulic fracturing in the Ozark National Forest in northwest Arkansas and under Greers Ferry Lake in north central Arkansas. Richard Mays of the lay firm Mays & White filed the suit. He has been involved in a number of high profile environmental cases in the state. The suits seeks an injunction against the issuance of additional gas leases until environmental impact statements and other federal requirements for drilling have been brought into compliance.

While the fracking in north central Arkansas has drawn national media attention because of earthquake storms in and around Guy, Arkansas (read more here), I have seen nothing about this process being used in the Ozark National Forest. Mays alleges, however, that hydraulic fracturing is taking place in the Ozark National Forest and that the number of wells there far exceeds estimates the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made in 2005. The suit asserts that the drilling will severely damage the forest, with deleterious effects on both surface and ground water,the air, and other aspects of the environment. Mays argues that, under federal law, the BLM should have conducted environmental impact statements and Resource Management Plans before permitting the fracking.

Politics in state legislatures shifting with losses of rural population

A. G. Sulzberger reports in today's New York Times on the consequences of rural population loss in the legislatures of several states that are popularly thought of as rural. The dateline is Lincoln, Nebraska, from whence Sulzberger reports that over half of the state's population now live in the three counties that are home to Nebraska's three largest metropolitan areas. He summarizes some political consequences of this:

The people who remain in rural parts of the country are used to seeing declining enrollment at schools and shuttered businesses on Main Street, as well as weakening political muscle in Washington. But now they are watching their political power falter even in states that have long been considered synonymous with rural America.

The story notes that only eight of Nebraska's state senators currently list their primary occupation as farmer or rancher, whereas 20 senators listed an agricultural occupation 35 years ago.

Sulzberger also provides anecdotes from other states popularly perceived (at least by residents of the coasts) as rural.

In North Dakota, for example, where 79 percent of counties lost population but the Fargo area boomed, more education money has migrated to urban schools and universities. In Kansas, which is using tax exemptions to lure new residents to counties facing double-digit population losses, rural legislators were unable to block a transportation bill favorable to the thriving metro areas. And in Iowa, where the new redistricting map shows gains for urban and suburban areas, rural legislators are already strategizing about their handicap of operating with fewer votes.

Contrast this story with reports like this one from 2009, which suggested that rural populations are disproportionately empowered at the state level. In addition, I've observed the struggle between rural and urban legislators in Arkansas regarding school funding. Read about recent events on that front here. A legislator from Marianna, Arkansas, population 4,385, has been one of the most vocal advocates for rural schools, and he has also provided legal counsel to various districts fighting consolidation.  Sulzberger's story notes the rural-urban struggle for education funding in Nebraska, where schools in Valentine, population 2,737, saw state aid for schools drop from $1.2 million to $400,000 as legislators from urban districts argued that the money should go where the kids are--essentially to Omaha and Lincoln.   

Here's a U.S. government website you can use to determine what percent of any given state's population is rural by any of a number of measures/definitions of "rural." Click on "Rural Definition Mapping Utility" to access the interactive mapping feature. To get data on the percentage of any state's population that is rural, download that state's pdf after clicking on "State Level Maps," and go to page 8 of any given state's data.

If you work through the states systematically, you will find that very few states--even among those popularly thought of as "rural"--have a majority rural population by the U.S. Census Bureau definition: population clusters of fewer than 2,500 people and those living in open territory. One that did in 2000 was Vermont, where a whopping 72.3% of the population live in rural places. Compare that to Arkansas, where 46% of the population lived in rural places a decade ago, and Nebraska, where just 35.1% were rural in 2000. In Montana, the population was evenly divided between rural and urban a decade ago, but I am guessing the 2011 Census shows "urbanites" have gained the upper hand even in Big Sky country.

Capturing a younger Joplin

In their recent story in the New York Times, Dan Barry, Richard Oppel Jr., and A.G. Sulzberger, write of Joplin, Missouri a week after a deadly tornado hit, destroying hundreds of businesses, churches, and other buildings. Those buildings served as landmarks of sorts, compass points for residents. Their absence make navigating the city more challenging. The authors use the photos of long-time Joplin photographer, Murwin Mosler, as a jumping off point for a stroll down memory lane. Mosler died in 2003, but many of his photos remained in his former home studio until it was destroyed in the tornado, scattering photos with the winds.

These photos convey an American place, as much South as Midwest, that developed in the late 19th century around the valuable minerals in its ground — lead, then zinc. A prosperous, rowdy town, host to parades and the occasional lynching, Joplin became a regional hub, with railroads and Route 66 passing through.

Mr. Mosler and his assistants chronicled the city from the 1930s to the 1960s, as it thrived during wartime, as demand for its zinc waned. The Joplin Junior Beef Shows at the stockyards. The exploits of the Joplin Miners baseball team, for whom a young, scrub-faced Mickey Mantle once played. The bowling leagues and building fires and Easter Sunday births and the costumed performances by Mary Ann Hatley’s Dance School.

Although I have praised the media here for not labeling Joplin "rural," these descriptions suggest its small-townish past--with links to two economic engines associated with rurality: agriculture and mining. Certainly, these fine writers make Joplin sound culturally rural--and mostly working class.