State Side: Rural America’s vanishing local economies

U.S. farmers spent a record $254 billion last year to grow our food and fibre, but most of the money left the rural areas, never to return

by ALAN GUEBERT

One of the oldest truisms in agriculture had it that “When farmers make money, everybody in town makes money.”

Note that I used the past tense because, if you’ve passed through almost any farm town in any farm state lately, few businesses – outside a coffee shop, a convenience store and a pub or two – exist anymore.