An Urban's Rural View

To save the countryside, nourish the cities. That may sound paradoxical, even radical, to rural politicians who nurse battle scars from fighting against cities for resources. But it actually makes better sense than more traditional rural-development policies, three Iowa State University scholars argue.

In "Can the Trend of Rural Population Decline Be Reversed?" (http://tiny.cc/…), Georgeanne Artz, Younjun Kim and Peter Orazem maintain that thriving metropolitan areas are the key to turning rural America around.

They build their case around a comparison of two states: Iowa and Nebraska. Nebraska suffers in their view from a paucity of metropolitan areas -- cities of more than 50,000. It has but four (Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island and Sioux City) to Iowa's 12. And all four are in the eastern part of the state.

Metro areas are critical to rural Americans, the argument goes, because they're where the better-paying jobs are. It's just a matter of being within commuting range. That's likely as true for farmers, with their growing dependence on off-farm income, as it is to residents of small towns.

"Nebraskans wanting to take advantage of the 20% wage premium paid in urban labor markets have to live in or near one of the four metropolitan areas," the Iowa State scholars note. "In contrast, the distribution of metropolitan areas in Iowa places about 90% of the population within a 45-minute commute of an urban labor market."

Having fewer metro areas, Nebraska has a less vibrant rural population. Although Nebraska's land mass is 99.2% rural, 73% of its citizens live in urban areas, versus only 64% of Iowans. Iowa's smallest county has 4,192 people; 33 of Nebraska's 93 counties have fewer.

The policy implications are clear. Iowa, the scholars say, should "continue fostering growth in urban markets and ensure that we have good commuting roads from metropolitan areas to surrounding small towns."

Rural politicians should stop viewing urban employment growth as a threat. "In fact, the growth of Iowa's urban job centers has meant the survival of small Iowa towns more than any programs aimed at creating jobs in rural towns."

Traditional rural-development programs -- "fostering rural entrepreneurship, promoting rural manufacturing, beautifying town centers, and expanding rural broadband" -- may "have some positive impacts." But the scholars say those programs won't reverse the population shift from the country to the city.

It is an interesting case they make, and it may well be right, or at least right for Iowa. It seems off-key, though, to suggest that Iowa is winning some sort of race with Nebraska. With a rural population that was smaller to begin with and facing rather different geographical imperatives, Nebraska wasn't competing in the same event.

Indeed, the Iowa State academics leave an intriguing question unasked: Why does Iowa have three times as many metro areas in the first place? From what seeds did metro centers sprout?

The obvious answer, it seems to me, is that pursuing smarter urban-development policies had little to do with it. A better guess is that metro centers grew as cities soaked up the flood of people leaving the farms when advances in agricultural technology rendered their labor superfluous.

If that's true, you'd naturally expect to see more metro centers in a state that started with a larger rural population and saw more ag-tech innovation. Iowa beats Nebraska on both counts.

As anyone who has driven I-80 from the Illinois border to the Wyoming border knows, the two states in between hail from different planets. Iowa is a verdant, crop-growing state from east to west. Back in the day, its farms were small and employed many hands. Breakthroughs in seed breeding, chemicals and equipment made most of those hands unnecessary. They had to find other ways to make a living.

In Nebraska, by contrast, you drive less than halfway across the state and you're in the arid west. Much of this dry land is devoted to cattle, which supported many fewer people to begin with. And livestock agriculture hasn't proved as amenable to productivity-boosting technology as crop growing.

Does this mean the scholars' preferred rural-development strategy is wrong? No. But it does suggest that the symbiotic relationship between city and countryside isn't as simple as the countryside is the parasite and the city the host.

Rural areas benefit from the high-paying jobs metro centers provide, yes. But rural labor helps metro areas to grow. If supporting urban economic development would benefit the countryside, supporting basic research on advanced agricultural technologies would ultimately be good for the cities.

We need a symbiosis of mutual benefit.

Urban Lehner can be reached at urbanity@hotmail.com

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