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Rural Kansas is dying

newfoodeconomy.org

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Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#81

Post by sverige »

jonknee wrote: post #22
typomatic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is much less interesting than the rust belt decline Can you expand on this? Is it because you don't care about farmers in comparison to industrial workers, or is there a deeper meaning?

Kansas was never bustling, the rust belt was.

Did you live there? There was a definite vibrancy to the network of small towns in the Midwest that is being lost, similar to the rust belt. The cultures were very different, though, so perhaps one person's "bustling" is another's unmentionable adjective.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#83

Post by Spooky23 »

chrischen wrote: post #31
sologoub wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that the promise of remote work hasn’t quite panned out, yet. However, the article is also noting something related: > Today, operators sitting at computers hundreds of miles from the farm can easily steer gigantic harvesters via satellite. Kansas’s agricultural landscape needs fewer and fewer human caretakers. In a way, they are realizing “telecommuting” for harvester operators and impacting local population.…

The alternative to virtual density is real density (à la big cities like Tokyo, New York). In my opinion remote technology has not been able to come close with the bandwidth increases of real proximity yet. The promise of VR, telepresence, is still unable to match the benefits of real presence.

I think it’s overrated. I worked for a startup in the 90s where my team was in Sacramento, Upstate NY, Toronto and a Wisconsin.

At the time, Nextel and ICQ were good enough. That was a great team and great time.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#84

Post by sudosteph »

I don't understand the logic behind commodity food economics. Why is there so much excess wheat sitting around waiting for prices to jump? Surely that will go bad eventually. How much food will get wasted because of volatile markets?

When I think of wheat, it's not just bread either. Breweries are a fast-growing industry that are springing up everywhere. I've seen so many of them become major boons to cities as they occupy formerly unused warehouse or industrial spaces. Maybe they could work out a cooperative deal with brewers to sell excess to them at lower costs to keep driving up demand for craft beer by making production more affordable. The real upside in all this, if wheat becomes cheaper maybe the places around me will make something other than ridiculously bitter IPAs.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#85

Post by antognini »

Madmallard wrote: post #79
chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

how do you feel about tornados

Probably the same way he feels about earthquakes.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#86

Post by AdamM12 »

Madmallard wrote: post #79
chrissnell wrote: post #70

I'm writing this post from my home in Manhattan, Kansas, a mid-sized town in the Flint Hills. We had a gorgeous sunset tonight and I watched it from my back porch, staring across my lawn in the rolling ranch land behind me. I'm working for a San Francisco YC alum tech company but living in one of the most affordable places in the US. Life is amazing out here. I have gigabit fiber internet, great third-wave coffee sho…

how do you feel about tornados

I've lived in Kansas 28 years and have never seen one. Avoid a trailer park and you'll be fine.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#87

Post by theseus7 »

The increasing concentration of farm land ownership in the hands of fewer, larger farmers is the result of declining property taxes on land:

http://www.masongaffney.org/publications/D1Rising_Inequality...

Farming is heavily dependent on labor and capital rather than land. Rural land is worth very little relative to urban land.

A broken tax system which assigns low taxes on land relative to taxes on capital and labor has resulted in higher land prices, increased the concentration of farm land ownership in the hands of fewer individuals, while shifting jobs and investment towards coastal cities where land values are highest.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#88

Post by stephengillie »

Animats wrote: post #40

Progress! More food from fewer farmers! You want millions of peasants tilling the land by hand?

Once upon a time, it took 90% of the US population to produce enough food to feed 100% of the US population.

Today, it takes 2% of the US population to produce enough food to feed 100% of the US population - freeing the other 88% to pursue other, more lofty goals, such as "Instagram Model" or "Net Influencer".

Picking berries or being a "net influencer"? Where is our time really more well-spent?

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#89

Post by aerotwelve »

enervate wrote: post #59
wyclif wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but producing & automating != success. The article talks about how there's a surplus of wheat everywhere in KS. There are places where you can see giant mounds of three year-old wheat stored under tarps. They can't possibly sell it all (at least not at a price where it would be profitable at the moment).

Are they just sitting on it until the price goes up? Why not sell for whatever they can get and then re-invest the money?

If it's like corn in Iowa, yes, many just hold it and hope for the price to go up. It seems unreasonable, but commodity prices are just that low; selling at the wrong time can be worse for your bottom line than doing nothing. Especially since many farmers go into debt to pay for the initial costs of planting, fertilizing, ...

You tend to see a lot more corn in storage (occasionally this is just huge piles of corn covered with a tarp!) right after harvest time, precisely because that's when the prices are the lowest. There's a surprisingly big market for huge containers that are designed to store crops for long periods of time.

Re: Rural Kansas is dying

#90

Post by madengr »

jpao79 wrote: post #34
DanAndersen wrote: post #18

The failed promise of telecommuting is a tragedy of the tech world. I'm a Kansan born and raised in the KC area (suburban rather than rural), and I wish a work-from-home career was more feasible in my line of work. I'd like nothing more than to live in a small Midwestern town; the city-hives hold no real attraction to me. The Internet should have freed more of us to live where we want, but in the most connected point…

How do we know that remote telecommuting work isn't working? If you could telecommute to work and could live virtually anywhere, Kansas would not likely be at the top of the list due to a somewhat harsh winter climate. I'd imagine people would locate somewhere remote but with a temperate climate (i.e. Central California coast, Florida, Colorado, Western Washington, or even Costa Rica, etc.).

I like the weather here I KS. I won’t live anywhere that does not get a continuous hard freeze to kill off all those things that bite.
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