BISMARCK, N.D. ? Those attending a three-day symposium on the redistribution of the population in the Great Plains came away with a simple message about why young people ? with the exception of Native Americans ? are trading rural America for city lights.
“It all boils down to community.”
That strong connection with the community and family ties is what is allowing growth on the reservations while the rest of the region is experiencing a redistribution of its population, participants in the Dickinson State University-sponsored sessions Oct. 15-17 agreed.
Unlike the trends displayed in graph after graph and map after map of outward migration of young people in the region, Native Americans show growth in their young and elderly populations as they move back to reservations.
The waning population of young people has concerned people in the 12-state Great Plains region, stretching from North Dakota to New Mexico and Texas, for years as they have watched young people leave and the shift in rural employment.
Every state in the nation grew in the past decade, but North and South Dakota grew with an increase of fewer than 100,000 people in the same period and the population in southern states increased twice to three times the national average, experts said.
Family and community may have as much to say about whether people leave or stay in the Great Plains as does a job, said Jim Sylvester, an economist for the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana-Missoula, who conducted a study in the Central and Northern Great Plains.
“If a person lives in an area to age 30, you’ve got him,” Sylvester said.
He said the one exception was the tribal population of young people who often choose to stay on the reservation.
The study was funded by the symposium and included 3,500 telephone surveys.
Those young people most likely to leave considered an adverse social climate and a lack of things to do as reasons for their relocation, Sylvester said.
Many of the North Dakotans had difficulty with the prospect of reshaping their ideas of the identity of rural America even though the charts, graphs and comments presented by some of the nation’s leading economists suggested the face of the rural landscape has shifted from an agricultural economy to a more suburban trend.
The impact has wide implications for those still making a living in agriculture and formulating national policy when it comes to rewriting the Farm Bill before Congress.
One voice conspicuously missing, was that of tribal leaders who have nurtured Native American agriculture and may be facing relevant changes in federal funding as rural policies change to fit the evolving economic landscape around them.
Symposium organizers said tribal governments had been invited to attend.
The shift in rural identity may mean sweeping changes in rural programs including those that fund agricultural and rural development programs tribes used to help build infrastructure, education and economic development.
Redistribution of the population will mean changes in the political landscape as states redistrict and minority representation increases.
The very nature of the shift away from an ag-based economy is changing the face of rural communities including how they do business and how they build business. The Plains states were once considered rural, an agriculturally based environment. Today, experts say rural carries an entirely different meaning because only a small percentage of family farms fuel the economy.
The three-day symposium, led by Dickinson State University faculty, received funds from Congress at the request of U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.
Speaking to the symposium by video link, Dorgan asked for help in developing public policy for rural America.
“I believe the economy we have is the economy we decide to have,” Dorgan said, pitching development of a modern economic homestead act for rural America to create incentives for young people to stay rather than relocate.
Agriculture policy and rural policy are not the same thing, said Mark Drabenstott, vice president and director of the Center for the Study of Rural America for the Federal Reserve in Kansas City. He noted that rural policy needs to be national and it needs to focus on place, collaboration and regional competitiveness.
The goals should be protecting and restoring the rural landscape, preventing urban overcrowding, preserving community cultural values and producing well-educated future citizens, Drabenstott said.
The United States is behind in understanding the value of place-based policies in rural areas. The modern European experience in countries featured strong local and rural economies, required holistic investments in human, social, financial and environmental capital, said Cornelia Flora, director of the North Central Center for Rural Development at Iowa State University.
“The EU learned that it needed a collaboration of market, state and civil society to succeed,” the sociology professor said.
The symposium included workshops focusing on various topics including cultural diversity. Participants were told recognizing the growing minority population, including Hispanics, Asians and a resettlement of refugees, means they will be forced to embrace the emergence of differing cultures as part of the landscape. They will have to move toward inclusion by providing support of collaborative efforts in the communities.
While Native Americans were looked upon separately, the representatives of public policy bodies, state and local government and academic institutions outlined the need to include them in collaborative ventures not only on a business level, but in helping to re-establish that sense of community tribal members already understand.
New rural policies for the United States should move from agricultural dependence to agricultural entrepreneurship, from commodity and farm to product and region, and from production outcomes to environmental outcomes, said Charles Fluharty, director of the Rural Policy Research Institute and interim director of the Missouri Institute of Public Policy. This would also involve investments of social and human capital.
Economist and futurist Lowell B. Catlett from the University of New Mexico delivered a humorous, yet sobering look at the changes marking the rural landscape and in the value system relating to disposable income. He warned participants to look at who holds the purse strings.
As the third millennium began, for the first time ever there were four generations alive. They have lots of money most of which is in the hands of people 65 and older, he said.
“If you are going to solve the rural issue, you need to know what those people want,” Catlett said.
In the next 11 years, as a majority of those older than 65 die, the United States will have the largest generational transfer of dollars in recorded history, he said.
For those living in the Plains region, it means the potential of revitalization by providing a place for them to spend their money along with wares and services that attract them.
Catlett pointed out a trend of people seeking entertainment instead of looking at their money in a more utilitarian sense.
He noted the trend of families buying a second home ? one where they work and one where they play. Their need to reconnect with the environment could be a boon for Great Plains communities promoting tourism and a pleasant place for leisure, he said.
Embracing emerging technology may hold the key to the future for rural areas of the nation.
Catlett talked of the desire of young people wanting to be connected to each other. He said in his teen years, it was a car that young people desired as a way of connecting with their peers. Today, they want cellular phones and palm devices to chat with one another.
“If there’s going to be a vibrant rural America, it will be a wireless rural America,” Catlett said.
A list of recommendations to renew their communities, renew the identity of the Plains region and reinvent the economy was compiled by Steven E. Daniels, director of the Western Rural Development Center and associate professor at Utah State University. He urged the group to build on the success and lessons of Regional Economic Area Partnerships, regional-based, federal-funded grass-roots efforts that have been under way for the past five years.
“Engage students in community life through civic opportunities. Move beyond commodity agriculture. Hold multi-state summits with foundations that fund programs in the Great Plains to develop strategies. Enhance information technologies in the region.”
Daniels said a need for timeliness was expressed, that government will have to provide incentives and not constraints. There will have to be a promotion of democratic engagement at all levels and a need to work toward ensuring a safe and sufficient food supply.
North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven, who sat in on a round table discussion, said people in North Dakota and the Great Plains states can drive the changes that are necessary.
Hoeven noted his state’s strengths in competitive advantages of a prime tourism environment, power production and valued-added agricultural products.
Montana State Sen. Linda Nelson said the symposium brought home the message that the Great Plains needs more than a national agricultural policy. It needs a national rural policy.
Dickinson Mayor Dennis Johnson said he and others came away convinced that fostering entrepreneur talent in his community is the best course of action and that by growing businesses the communities can renew their sense of place.
Dickinson State University President Lee Vickers said he looked upon the project as a catalyst for bringing about a renewed commitment to community and revitalization in the region.
There will be a second symposium for state and local officials April 11-12 in Dickinson. Organizers say they hope to expand on the suggestions to improve the region during the conference.
