Farmers support immigration reform

That was the dominant theme of a field trip I took at the Rural Sociological Society meeting in Boise a few days ago. In particular, dairy farmers in the state's Magic Valley (did you know Idaho is the third biggest milk producer in the country now?) are running nearly entirely off Latina/o labor, and they live in fear of an ICE raid. Why? They say they won't be able to run their operations if "their Mexicans" are taken away.

On one level, what the dairy farmers say is offensive. That is, just the very phrase "my Mexicans," makes me shudder. The farmers say that white labor is unreliable, that no one else wants to do these unpleasant, back-breaking jobs except the "Mexicans." They may be right. They laud the "Mexicans'" extraordinary work ethic, relying on this immigrant labor, much of it apparently undocumented, to do the grinding work of their operation, often in 10-hour and 12-hour shifts. The massive dairy farm we visited (milking about 3,000 cows, keeping up to another 10,000 calves at times) employs about 200 workers, paid between $2000 and $3000 a month, depending on job and seniority. That may be a living wage, but just barely. Meanwhile, it seems to me that use of this immigrant labor Latina/o-izes the underclass--which in my mind is a very good argument for immigration reform.

The dairy farmers told us that all of their workers present the requisite Social Security Number and photo identification, but they don't know if the documents are valid.

On the other hand, I understand why the dairy farmers don't feel they can absorb greater labor costs. They work very hard and are struggling to make ends meet and turn a profit as commodity markets control so many aspects of the industry's economics, and input costs (feeding the cattle!) sky rocket.

What is happening in Idaho's dairy industry is reflected in this story in today's New York Times. Jesse McKinley and Julia Preston report from Patterson, California, under the headline, "Farmers Oppose G.O.P. Bill on Immigration." Here are the first few paragraphs:

Farmers across the country are rallying to fight a Republican-sponsored bill that would force them and all other employers to verify the legal immigration status of their workers, a move some say could imperil not only future harvests but also the agricultural community’s traditional support for conservative candidates.

The bill was proposed by Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. It would require farmers — who have long relied on a labor force of immigrants, a majority here without legal documents — to check all new hires through E-Verify, a federal database run by the Department of Homeland Security devised to ferret out illegal immigrants.

McKinley and Preston's story echoes what is happening in Idaho. Farm laborers present documents to their employers, but it is an "open secret that many farmworkers' documents are false."

As one dairy farmer to whom we spoke in the Magic Valley said, "this [the immigration law] has got to be fixed, unless you want to start getting your milk from China."

"Savant of country wisdom"

Kim Severson reports in today's New York Times about Bobby Kirk, from Bogart, Georgia, population 1,407. The story illustrates what happens when there's a slow news day (I've noticed a lot of these days in recent weeks). Mr. Kirk shared his observation that it's "too hot to fish" with a local newspaper reporter last week-end and here's what happened next:

Then, as it does in this digital age, the swirl of fame began. The article got sent around on Twitter and picked up in other local newspapers. A CBS radio affiliate in Atlanta, about an hour west of here, called for an interview, as did the crew from Comedy Central. There was talk of T-shirts and ball caps. A large urban newspaper took interest.

Ultimately, even a crew from The Colbert Report traveled down the country road to Kirk's house for an interview.

A reporter from the Athens Banner-Herald commented on the phenomenon of Mr. Kirk's newfound fame:

“People can identify with what Bobby was saying .... He’s just a plain-spoken, average guy. I think it’s just time for the average guy’s opinion to come out.”

While I have some qualms about this poking fun at a simple Southern man, Kirk apparently doesn't mind. “They can make a monkey out of me as long as I get some money,” he said.

Polygamist leader, on trial, warns of "sickness and death"

Yesterday, polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who is on trial in San Angelo, Texas for having sex with two under-age females in his sect, told the court that those involved in the trial would face "sickness and death" unless the trial was halted. The warning came after Jeffs spoke extensively in court, objecting to the introduction of evidence that the F.B.I. seized from his group's Eldorado, Texas compound. After Judge Barbara Walther overruled his objection, he asked to read what he called a "statement from God." Judge Walther dismissed the jury before he read the statement of demand that the trial end. She warned Jeffs not to make any such comments in the presence of the jury.

Earlier this week, Jeffs, who is the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, fired his lawyers, and he is representing himself.

Read more here and here about this week's trial. An earlier post about the sect and events at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas is here.

Jeffs was convicted of rape in Utah a few years ago, but those convictions were overturned last summer. Read more here.

Rural America disappearing?

That was the message from the Associated Press in this story yesterday. Here's the lede:

Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the nation's population, the lowest ever.

The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by midcentury, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant.

* * *

Barring fresh investment that could bring jobs, however, large swaths of the Great Plains and Appalachia, along with parts of Arkansas, Mississippi and North Texas, could face significant population declines.

Interestingly, a contrary message is being delivered at the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, where I am right now. Kenneth Johnson of Loyola University Chicago and the Carsey Institute says the AP figures are misleading for two reasons. First, they are imprecise about the starting point--that is the 2000 Census rural population, which they put at 20%, suggesting a 4% drop in the nation's rural population over the decade. Second, they do not acknowledge that the definition of rural has changed between the two censuses. Johnson says that, taking these two factors into account, the drop in population percentage was more like 17.3% to 16.5%.

Johnson noted that one state, West Virginia, has gone in to natural decrease in its entirety, while Maine is not far behind. Another focus of his comments was the fact that children are on vanguard of demographic change in rural America--in particular the children of immigrants in so-called new destinations.

Water banking pits urban against agricultural in California's Central Valley

The New York Times reports today from Bakersfield, California under the headline, "Storing Water for a Dry Day Leads to Suits." The rural angle is principally an agricultural one. Here's an excerpt about residential water users who began to experience water shortages last summer:

They blamed water banking, a system in which water-rights holders — mostly in the rural West — store water in underground reservoirs either for their own future use or for leasing to fast-growing urban areas.

So the neighbors’ small local water utility has gone to state court to challenge the wealthy farming interests that dominate two of the country’s largest water banks.

Viewed as test cases for the size and scope of water-banking operations, the lawsuits claim that enormous withdrawals of water by the banks lowered the water table, causing geological damage, service disruptions and costly repairs.

The Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District is the plaintiff, suing the Kern County Water Agency.

My Rural Travelogue (Part XV): Local politics in the Northern Neck of Virginia

This is part two in a series about my trip last month to the Northern Neck of Virginia. Read the first post here, which provides background on the counties' economic and demographic profiles. In this post, I am going to summarize some of the stories in the local newspapers we read while there. First, though, I want to note that each of the counties we visited seems to have only a weekly paper, and they all appeared to have the same owner. I deduced this because many of the same stories appeared in each of the papers, under the same byline.

One of the papers, the Northern Neck News, covered several counties, and it featured this story out of Richmond County: "Against the grain, board votes to approve budget." The story is accompanied by a photo of a number of senior citizens holding up identical signs that say, "'We the People' Say No!" In spite of this message from some of the county's voters, the story reports that "supervisors voted 3-2 last Thursday to proceed with funding what will be Richmond County's largest capital investment to date," a new high school. The supervisors voted to approve a $20.3 million spending plan, an increase of more than $750,000 over the prior year's plan. This will result in an increase of property tax to $.67 per $100 assessed, up $.11 per $100. "Under the current plan, Richmond County Intermediate School would be vacated for what now functions as the county's high school, the population of which would relocate to the new facility estimated to cost $23 million." I suppose it is nothing new for elderly folks to oppose spending on schools, but it seems awfully short-sighted for the community--especially given that Richmond County's poverty rate is 19.3%. The county's population is just under 10,000.

In another front-page story, the paper reports that the Warsaw Town Council "shelved" a "citizens' proposal to lower the number of elected officials in Warsaw" and impose term limits ... "in deference to the council's desire to see how the upcoming newly formatted election will work." The paper does not explain how the format of upcoming elections is new, but it does include many quotes from council members about why they oppose term limits.

I note that in both of these stories, local governing bodies are resisting populist calls for limits on their powers and/or spending.

In other news:

• Northumberland County's plan for re-districting was approved by the U.S. Dept. of Justice.
  
• St. Stephens Episcopal and Anglican congregations put on evidence in a lawsuit to determine which is entitled to St. Stephens church in Heathsville. The suit apparently stems from a split within the Episcopal church worldwide, whereby some members have left to join the Convocations of Anglicans in North America.
• The ranks of Republicans vying for the 99th District House of Delegates seat thinned from five to three. The primary is August 23.
• Commencement photos from Northumberland High School and Rappahannock High School are features.
  
• An environmental controversy has erupted over a new asphalt plant in Tappahannock. An amendment to a zoning ordinance has been proposed.
  

Rural kids' pasttime becomes rodeo sport

Here's an excerpt from the light-hearted story in today's New York Times:

Playing make-believe rodeo with sheep has long been a pastime of rambunctious rural children. But the sport has begun to move from horseplay, and the occasional rodeo halftime show, to wider, sometimes suburban, audiences and competitors, toward becoming a codified sport with its own gear and championships.

* * *

The sport’s popularity seems based in ... a rejection of the trend of bubble-wrapping childhood — and a move toward embracing traditional, rough-and-tumble Western culture, according to interviews with participants.

I guess it is a slow news day--or the NYT is looking for some light relief from the depressing news of partisan politics in Washington.

Cutbacks in "rural" air routes

Both NPR and the New York Times did stories this past week on impending cutbacks to commercial airline routes that serve small markets. Both used the word "rural" to characterize these markets, which are more accurately labeled nonmetropolitan.

Here's the lede for the Times story, which appeared in the business section and focuses on airline economics.

Rural America, already struggling to recover from the recession and the flight of its young people, is about to take another blow: the loss of its airline service.

That was underscored last week when Delta Air Lines announced that it “can no longer afford” to continue service at 24 small airports. The carrier says it is losing a total of $14 million a year on flights from places like Thief River Falls, a city of 8,600 in northwest Minnesota that fills only 12 percent of the seats, or Pierre, the capital of South Dakota, where Delta’s two daily flights are on average less than half full.

The map accompanying the story indicates that the states losing routes are Mississippi, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Montana. Delta took on many of these routes when it acquired Northwest Airlines. Serving these markets has been made more economically feasible by the nearly $200 million in federal subsidies that small airports receive in order "to maintain air service under the Essential Air Service program." Those subsidies are set to expire in 2013.

The NPR report is more focused on politics than business, as the headline suggests: "Partisan Dispute to Partially Shut down FAA." Here's the story's lede:

Efforts to avert a shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration failed Friday amid a disagreement over a $16.5 million cut in subsidies to 13 rural communities, ensuring that nearly 4,000 people will be temporarily out of work and federal airline ticket taxes will be suspended.

* * *

But underlying the dispute on rural air service subsidies was a standoff between the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate over a provision in long-term funding legislation for the FAA that would make it more difficult for airline and railroad workers to unionize.

Read more here.

Finally, this item in today's New York Times also mentions "rural airports" in passing. The story is about how wealthy families are now using private planes to get their kids to summer in camps in hard-to-reach places like Maine. One line notes that this week-end, a popular one for family visits to camps, "private planes jammed the runways at small rural airports" in Maine. I guess those families can pay whatever fees the small airports charge, even absent subsidies.

Training physicians in rural Kansas--and hoping they'll stay there

The University of Kansas is taking a somewhat novel approach to the shortage of primary care doctors in rural America: going to rural (or at least nonmetropolitan) America to educate doctors. The New York Times reports today on a new medical school in Salina, Kansas, population 46,006, which has an entering class this fall of eight students. The program is similar to one with some of the same aims at the University of Indiana in Terre Haute.

This excerpt from A.G. Sulzberger's story contrasts the experience that Salina students will have with those at the University of Kansas's "state-of-the-art medical and research facilities in Kansas City":

It will be a different experience, one that administrators say will better prepare students for the realities of a rural practice. Lectures on subjects like anatomy will be delivered via streaming video, lab work will be overseen by more practicing generalists and fewer academic specialists, and the problems of patients will tend more to the everyday than to the extraordinary.

And, the thinking goes, spouses picked up along the way are less likely to complain about moving to a small town.

This last part seems a critical component of the strategy because keeping the new doctors (and their families) interested in rural living is key to getting and keeping them engaged in rural practice.

Sulzberger notes other strategies policy makers have used in recent years to ameliorate the shortage of rural physicians, including recruiting students from rural areas and giving them preference in admissions, guaranteeing admission and/or forgiving loans for those who commit to rural practice, and encouraging students to spend time training in a rural locale.

In Kansas, the shortage of medical professionals has become acute in recent years--and it is expected to worsen as more physicians retire. A "vast majority" of Kansas is under-served, according to Sulzberger's report, with five counties lacking even a single physician.

Salina is the county seat of Saline County, Kansas, a micropolitan county with a population of 54,076. It is in north central part of the state.

Going rural to dodge government regulation

That is one of the messages of A.G. Sulzberger's story about the construction of a 72,000 square foot "castle" in the rural Ozarks. Sulzberger writes of the "behemoth vacation home" that Steven T. Huff, chairman of the board of TF Concrete Forming Systems, is building in Christian County, Missouri, between Springfield and Branson. The home, which has been under construction for two years already, is made primarily of concrete.

Sulzberger writes that many are speculating about the purpose of the structure--the largest single-family dwelling in the United States--but that Huff says "he wanted to demonstrate the viability of new concrete technology that he believes will lower energy consumption. The size of the building, which is significantly larger than the White House, partly reflects a desire to build at a commercial scale for testing purposes," Huff said.

Here's the part of the story that struck me as especially interesting in relation to the rural locale:

Mr. Huff, a longtime resident of Virginia, chose the site on Woods Fork Road because it is just hours from his boyhood home. Also, he said building in that part of the country would help him show how the technology handles both hot and cold weather and even tornadoes. Finally, there is another advantage — by locating in an area famous for a small government approach, he is not subject to building regulations or inspection, which he said would have complicated his efforts.

So, Huff suggests two characteristics associated with rural people and places: (1) attachment to place and (2) a relative absence of law and regulation. A Christian County planning and zoning official confirms the latter, stating, "We try not to be more intrusive than we have to."

Small-town government run amok (Part IV): Gould, Arkansas

A few days ago I wrote about a feud between the mayor and town council in Quartzsite, Arizona. Today's featured mayor-city council feud is in Gould, Arkansas, population 1,552. There, the city council has passed an ordinance making it illegal to form any type of group without the council's permission. The council was apparently motivated to pass this law because it believes the city's mayor is using public resources to "hold community meetings without advertising them to the entire town." The ordinance is one of a cluster of three recently passed that seems to target the Gould Citizens Advisory Council, which describes itself as "a nonpartisan group that educates voters and raises money for public causes."

As Robbie Brown reports in today's New York Times, "legal scholars agree" this is "a clear violation of the Constitution." Brown quotes Mark Hayes, general counsel for the Arkansas Municipal League: “I’ve seen some humdingers, but never any ordinance like this. This is certainly one for the books.”

A Little Rock broadcast journalist, Donna Terrell, was so surprised by news of the ordinances that she blurted out on television, "You've got to be kidding me." She subsequently attributed events in Gould to the lack of anonymity in small towns:

Political feuds become especially heated in places “where everybody knows everyone." ... "You start to see a lot of emotion where sometimes in a larger city people tend to mask their emotions.”

Brown notes that the discord has arisen, in large part, because of differing opinions over what to do about the city's fiscal crisis: $300,000 in unpaid taxes. I wonder if, as in Quartzsite, Arizona, the core dispute in Gould is about the size and role of (local) government. Another common theme of events in Arkansas and Arizona is that both governing bodies have responded to public criticism by trying to squelch it (e.g., not permitting public comments at meetings; banning organizations that criticize the government). Funny, I would have expected small-town, libertarian leaning governments to be more likely to endorse the good ol' marketplace of ideas.