General

Small-Scale Farming Could Restore America’s Rural Towns

March 15, 2017

Although many people in these struggling regions voted for the new president, his cynical answers will not bring them prosperity. But I saw what could.

Boarded-up business districts. Abandoned warehouses. Barns and homes covered by tarps slowly collapsing into the earth. It was startling how often this scene repeated as I drove through the rural areas of the Midwest, South, and West on the road trip that resulted in the book The Revolution Where You Live.

Many of these are the same areas that famously voted for a loudmouth New Yorker. For some, he better represented conservative, rural values than Hillary Clinton did. These devastated regions, where opioid addiction is at epidemic levels, are places that ran out of hope.

The cynical and bankrupt answers offered up by the 45th president will not bring prosperity to these regions. But neither would the corporate-friendly policies of a President Hillary Clinton and others in her wing of the Democratic Party.

So what actually would bring about rural prosperity?

I found some hints on my long road trip. The relatively prosperous small towns I stumbled on often turned out to include large Amish or Mennonite populations. These groups have been spreading quietly, buying up land and bringing back small-scale farming.

I visited Organic Valley, the largest farmer-owned organic cooperative in the United States, with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.