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Commentary: Agricultural Carbon Markets are Booming. Who Is Profiting?
The agricultural carbon market is generating buzz across the heartlands. In rural Oklahoma, producers are asking how “carbon farming” works and, importantly, who benefits. “From the producer’s standpoint, it’s the Wild West,” says Sarah Blaney, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts (OACD). Blaney has been navigating carbon markets for more than a decade.
The CDC Lacks a Rural Focus. Researchers Hope a Newly Funded Office Will Help
This story was originally reported by KFF Health News. In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published multiple reports analyzing health disparities between rural and urban populations. That effort pleased researchers and advocates for improving rural health because the dozen or so examinations of rural health data provided...
In Race for Child Care, Rural Families — and Rural Economies — Face an Especially Steep Climb
For Angela, a mother of two in southern Missouri, great lengths were necessary to secure child care for her kids. “I actually told my day care I was pregnant with my second before any of my family to secure a spot for him as a child under two,” she says. “It is wild to me that I lined up both my day cares a year prior to needing them.”
Six Years after ‘Cabela’s Debacle,’ the Lights are Still On in the Small Town of Sidney, Nebraska
This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press. The forest green roof and pair of bronze stags frozen in combat are impossible to miss as you drive down Interstate 80. So are the two corporate buildings – 550,000 square feet of nearly empty office space, long offered for a...
Commentary: How a Startup Peanut Plant Is Revitalizing a Corner of Rural Georgia
Editor’s Note: This article was provided by Coastal Enterprises, Inc. CEI’s subsidiary, CEI Capital Management, was part of arranging financing for Premium Peanut through the federal New Markets Tax Credit. When Premium Peanut presented its first five-year-service awards last year, it was a true celebration. The young company...
New DOT Program Meets Vehicle Collisions with Wildlife Head On
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a new pilot program that will allocate $350 million for wildlife crossing projects on roads, specifically in rural communities where vehicle collisions with animals are most common. While the program has received praise from conservation groups who say it could protect...
Commentary: Is it Culture or Economics? Why Rural Communities Have Moved to the Right
There’s a recurring debate among liberal and progressive folks as to whether or not the huge shift to the right among rural and working-class people is driven by “cultural” or “economic” concerns, by hot-button social issues like “abortion, guns, and gays” or by bad economic fortunes. You can use voting patterns and survey data to make a case for one over the other, and many people do just that. Similar arguments are made regarding the role of “wokeness” in alienating people, or of race and racism in driving white folks without a college degree into resentment and anger over their loss of social standing.
Isom IGA: The Grocery Store That Love Rebuilt
The grand reopening of Kentucky’s Isom IGA, nine months after the store was severely damaged by flooding, was about a lot more than one family and their business. It was a celebration of rural vitality, of compassionate entrepreneurship, and of a community’s love and perseverance. Isom is an...
Sandhill Crane Counting: ‘One of the Sweeter Things in Life’
At 5:45 a.m., standing in the snow at the edge of a frozen lake, my toes slowly going numb under two layers of socks, I heard it. Compared to the familiar early morning chatter of birds greeting the sunrise, this sound, rising out of the frozen cattails, seemed prehistoric. Something you might hear in a Jurassic Park movie. A shrill, warbling, two-note trumpet.
Q&A: Mesha Maren’s Small Town Roots Find a Home in Her Writing
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Beyond the Bottom Line: Impact Investing Looks to Correct Underinvestment in Rural America
In Maine, a kelp company received a loan for a greenhouse so it can dry its seaweed year-round. The family-owned business grows and harvests seaweed and mussels, uses reusable and compostable materials for their packaging, and provides employment in a small coastal community. In East Kentucky, a housing nonprofit received...
Rural Renewal: Placemaking In Small Towns Through Good Design
Community members in a small town in Minnesota were looking for ways to create a community center that would not only serve as a hub for residents but also as a way to get students involved in the process. “How can we help get the students at the table so...
Commentary: Why U.S. Rural Policy Should Matter to Everyone
On December 27, 2022, the New York Times published an essay I wrote calling for a renaissance in federal rural policy. My motivation for writing the article was borne from a frustration of the media’s obsession with rural politics—that is, who in rural America is voting for whom, and why—with little regard or attention to rural policy, or how federal, state, and local governments could do things differently to help rural places to thrive.
Pieces of Time Fill the Museum of Appalachia
It wasn’t uncommon, a few years ago, to see historian and collector John Rice Irwin on a back porch at the Museum of Appalachia, watching with a smile on his face as people enjoyed the fruits of his labor. For decades, Irwin collected items great (a horse-drawn funeral hearse)...
Educators and Students Navigate Marijuana Legalization in Rural Colorado
Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox. Growing up in...
Commentary: In Rural America, ‘Those Who Can Supply the Talent Will Be the Winners’
Editor’s Note: This article is taken from a speech that Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, delivered this morning (April 12, 2023) at the Richmond Fed’s rural investment conference. Over the last few decades, we’ve seen small towns struggle, particularly those that lost manufacturers...
Commentary: When Our Legislators Defend Guns Instead of Children, It’s Time for Civil Disobedience
Editor’s Note: The essay commenting on the Nashville, Tennessee, mass shooting that occurred March 27, 2023, was originally published on April 7, 2023, in the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader. On April 10, five people plus the perpetrator died in a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky. Eight more people were injured.
Commentary – To My Rural Tennessee Neighbors: You Are Not Alone
Editor’s Note: Last week the Tennessee House of Representatives voted on the expulsion of three members accused of breaching decorum in their support of debating gun regulations after a school shooting in Nashville that left three children and three adults dead. The Republican supermajority expelled Democrats Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis. The third representative, Democrat Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, retained her seat by one vote. Jones and Pearson are Black men. Johnson is a white woman.
Lack of Access to Infrastructure Hurts Voter Participation in Rural America
Researchers from the Population Health Institute say that lack of access to infrastructure like broadband, recreation facilities, and public libraries hurts voter turnout in rural places. The lowest voter turnout in the U.S. is in rural counties and small metropolitan areas, according to new data from County Health Rankings and...
Commentary: America’s Cropland – Talk Is Cheap When It Comes to Sustainability or Organic Farming
America’s cropland is awash with chemicals. Despite incentives to establish more sustainable – even organic – farming practices, most farmers are caught in an industrial system of chemicals, hybrid seed, and genetically modified (GMO) seed. Leadership from the USDA and agriculture schools, like the one at Iowa...
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