Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) recently introduced legislation to tighten payment limits on federal farm programs and close loopholes mega-farms use to evade those limits. Mega-farms use unlimited farm program payments to bid up land costs, thereby driving smaller, family farmers out of business and barring beginning farmers from ever getting started.
For far too long one of the only narratives about rural America has read something like this: YOUNG PEOPLE FLEE RURAL AMERICA. There's another story, however, about young people and professionals returning.
I recently read an article discussing how younger, college-educated people are drawn to life in a city. One source pondered, “Why wouldn’t a college grad be drawn by the allure of life in a big city?” He assumes there are few rural opportunities for young people and that nothing can change that.
Have you heard the news? Farmland values continue to escalate at alarming rates. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t catch you by surprise.
The Ag Letter, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, showed a 16 percent increase in farmland values in 2012 for the district. Their district includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Iowa saw the highest increase, a 20 percent gain from Jan 2012 to Jan 2013.
When I left home for college, I wasn’t sure I’d ever return to the same rural community I was born and raised. But I did know that wherever I landed, it would be somewhere in rural America.
