Margot Ford McMillen

Just back from a Missouri-to-California car trip and wow the rural community is in trouble … again …

Or maybe I should say “in trouble, still.”

As we rolled through Kansas on I-70, we saw field after field left unplanted. Some looked like they were tilled but left without cover. Others look like they’ve been enrolled in CRP, a government program that pays farmers to leave fields fallow but mowed to keep weeds down so they can be used in the future. Some fields just looked like they’ve been left to weeds.

In fact, according to the American Farm Bureau, Kansas farms have lost 5% of their acreage in the last year—1.3 million acres. Nobody seems to know what exactly is going on, but uncertainty over commodity prices due to tariffs and other market concerns, loss of immigrant workers and drought, including alarm over the dwindling Ogallala Aquifer are some of the worries. Depressing news on farm income has also contributed to folks just giving up and moving to town.

In Colorado, I start looking for my usual delight—fruit stands on the western slope. And, hallelujah! I was able to find them and stock up. I wasn’t positive that the melons, peaches, berries and cherries in the bins were from the farms around there but my attitude is that if folks have a crop failure but work hard to stock their farmstands with fair-priced produce to keep customers coming, more power to them. When the year’s good they’ll still be in business.

With so much vacant land, and so much wind and sunlight, the plains could become America’s energy powerhouses but along I-70 the wind farms and solar farms are few and far between.

Rolling along, as the landscape got rockier, the valleys appeared drier. In fact, the only green fields we saw as we neared the Rocky Mountains were irrigated fields planted in alfalfa. Hay for horses. As a horse lover, I’m OK with keeping them fed. But what happened to the wheat? And then, of course, as the landscape got rockier, the pastures disappear and you wonder how the antelope can make it on a diet of sagebrush. That desert goes on for a couple of states, almost until you get to California’s central valley where water battles between growers and cities have been going on for decades.

Driving home along I-80, we saw more wind farms, hooray. But the main thing that stuck out, vegetation-wise, was the huge number of dead trees at the edges of fields. Drought and the overuse of chemical weed killers has taken their toll along with the usual bugs and diseases that sweep throught when they can take advantage of weakened stock. Emerald ash borer is getting all the ash trees in the nation and even the most dedicated ash tree lovers are finally letting go of the expensive treatments that keep the bugs at bay.

But, in general, I-80 fields looked a little better and maybe, I thought, the loss of farm fields was just my imagination. But, no, waiting in the stack of mail at home was a report from Successful Farming. Even though crops are maturing on schedule and look pretty good, Kansas corn acres are down 100,000 acres, soybeans down 140,000 acres, sorghum down 100,000 acres and wheat down 300,000 acres.

Fortunately for consumers, good weather means that production per acre is strong so we’ll still be able to chow down on cookies, cakes, gravies and cereals. But here’s the thing: Rural America is in deep trouble. Stopping along the way for food and lodging, we could see damage to other industries: Independent restaurants are shuttered, slammed out of business by chains and franchises. Yes, the chains and franchises will pay off for Wall Street, but rural America is the heart of production. ­Less production on farm fields means less food and that means more imports, more tariffs, more expense for consumers.

While the agriculture system has its problem, we all depend on it. I am the first to object to large-scale production of ethanol from corn and bio-diesel from soy because there is very little net gain from energy going into the fields in terms of gasoline for tractors and chemicals for the genetically altered crops and I certainly don’t like the subsidy systems that has kept those mega-farms in business. But, at the same time, America’s expanses ­should be used for the good.

I was pretty relieved when, returning home, I found my local farmers’ markets thriving. Local growers, who produce more edible products than ethanol and biodiesel, are still working small acreages to the benefit of neighbors. I’m also hearing folks talk about planting trees in plots that were formerly un-used or in CRP. Growing trees, the scientists say, is the one sure way we have of capturing carbon dioxide and stalling climate change.

With the old rural economic engines threatened from all directions, supporting our local growers is the best way consumers can guarantee a future of safe, fresh, locally-produced food and energy.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.”

Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.