Life Of Plains Ebbing Away

From North Dakota To The Texas Panhandle, The Rural Population Is Vanishing, A Victim Of Farm-aid Programs Designed To Preserve It.

August 29, 1999|By Greg Burns, Tribune Staff Writer.

LAKOTA, N.D. — Across the broad prairie surrounding this farming community, ducks by the thousands bask in soggy fields that once produced tons of wheat.

Deer make their homes in the abandoned sites of farmsteads and even entire towns.

People? They're the endangered species.

In dozens of farm counties stretching from here to the Texas Panhandle, rural depopulation has reached an epic phase.

The nation's breadbasket is emptying, as deaths outnumber births at a historic rate. And the decline in population is taking a toll on the graying ranks of survivors.

"Is this the end of our community? You worry," says Sharon Young, a local school official who works at the quiet Lakota courthouse.

To be sure, the well-chronicled collapse of the farm economy is part of the problem. Faced with evaporating markets in Asia and bumper crops of wheat, corn and soybeans, Midwest farmers are laboring under a mismatch of supply and demand that has sent commodity prices to some of the lowest levels in 30 years.

The cries aren't limited to remote spots like North Dakota. Gazing at his cornfields near Pontiac, Ill., farmer Mark Henrichs sees not a scene of bucolic splendor, but rather "just a bloodbath. The government better come through with something," he says.

Trouble is, large-scale government bailouts over the years have done at least as much harm as good. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the central Plains, where tens of billions in federal aid programs that are supposed to prop up rural America have created a welfare state of sorts.

Federal lawmakers have brushed aside evidence that the aid isn't performing as advertised. A recent USDA study, for instance, showed that the latest plan of annual farm subsidies, known as "Freedom to Farm," worked even more to the benefit of absentee farmland owners than previous giveaways by making it easier for them to raise rental rates.

In addition, the biggest operators get most of the federal subsidies, enabling them to take on additional acreage, driving out their smaller neighbors around Lakota and elsewhere.

Rather than preserving family farms and small rural communities, the huge federal payments have served to "depopulate the landscape," according to Purdue University's Don Paarlberg, the 88-year-old patriarch of U.S. agricultural economists.

Of course, that hasn't stopped Congress from pouring on cash by the bushel. Next month, another multibillion-dollar farm-aid package is likely to sprint through, as political calculations run roughshod over demographic and economic realities.

"If they were intending to keep the family farm, it hasn't worked, and maybe it couldn't," notes Kenneth Johnson of Loyola University in Chicago, a leading rural demographer. "A whole part of American history is changing."

And as the middle of the country begins to resemble a government-funded nursing home on the range, a bigger question looms: Can the Plains as we know it survive? Is a culture rich in pioneer heritage slipping away forever?

Lakota a microcosm

Lakota and its surrounding Nelson County hold a clue to the answers, providing a microcosm of the region.

At age 68, former Lakota resident Duane Williams can remember a town so full of life that his father's barbershop stayed open until midnight every Saturday, while the gossip flew faster than the shears.

Even with a shrinking population of 765, Lakota remains the center of life in Nelson County. But the Williams barbershop is long gone, and the Saturday nights can be eerily silent. The hard times in agriculture have eroded the county's business base, forcing younger folks to leave in search of work, which in turn sets the stage for the downward spiral of deaths over births.

"They are dying," says Williams, who left decades ago for a business career after finding no decent jobs at home. He has since retired to north suburban Lake Zurich, Ill., some 675 miles from Nelson County, one of many who found their fortunes far away.

Indeed, it's a county where plunging enrollment has spawned a bitter fight over school consolidation.

It's a county where the spiffiest business around is the Good Samaritan nursing home, and Mayor Denny Winkler, a low-key retired school principal, speaks of the elderly as "our biggest resource."

In short, it's like many other counties in the middle of the country, where the losses have mounted in spite of enormous federal outlays.

Nelson County is among 162 rural counties in the Plains losing population at a rapid clip, extending a trend that has gone on for decades as agriculture has mechanized, according to Loyola demographer Johnson. What's new is the extent of death-to-birth imbalances that underscore the trend's terminal, persistent nature.

No love letters

Consequently, even though the government provides nearly a quarter of Nelson County's collective income through Social Security and other retiree programs, and at least another 10 percent from farm aid, the residents hardly are littering Washington with love letters.