Communities in Transition

 

Rural Population Growth and Decline
Iowa has some 955 incorporated places or communities.  While the number of communities has declined ever so slightly over the past century, the ability of many of them to continue to exist as governing structures masks an important change that began a century ago as farm mechanization encouraged family farmers to put more land under the plow.  The most pronounced surge in farm consolidation and decline of rural communities and counties occurred with the farm crisis of the 1980s which was the bust that followed a boom in exports and agricultural prices and a run-up in land prices.  During the 1970s, only 42 of Iowas 99 counties experienced population decline, while during the bust years of the 1980s all but seven counties experienced population loss.  While the early 1980s were recession years for the nation as a whole, Iowa climbed even more slowly out of the economic slump, because of the continued stagnation of the farm economy and the decline in Iowas manufacturing sector, which wasand is--also heavily dependent on the farm economy.  The 1990s saw widespread recovery and half of those counties that had lost population were able to reverse directions.  The economic slowdown of the first half of the current decade and continued deindustrialization in the U.S. and in Iowa spelled continued or renewed decline of nearly 80 percent of Iowas counties and many of its communities.

Rural communities and the global economy
Today Iowa and the entire middle part of the country are in the midst of another boom in commodity and land prices due to a major shift of agricultural land to corn for ethanol as a substitute for gasoline.  This is an interim measure designed to alleviating sharp increases in petroleum prices due to expanding world-wide demand and speculation based on instability in the Middle East.  The increased demand for corn contributes to an increase in other commodity prices because of a shift of crop land to corn.  The recent expansion of U.S. agricultural exports, also contributes to this agricultural prosperity.  The weakened dollar, which makes U.S. agricultural products cheaper than they would otherwise be for foreign buyers, and rapid economic growth in key countries and world regions, including China, India, and parts of South America and Southeast and East Asia have led to a greater demand for agricultural products, particularly meat.  These patterns are producing an economic boom in the middle part of the U.S. that rivals that of the latter part of the 1970s.   

Iowa’s communities, although much less dependent on agricultural production and farm employment than ever before, are—in relation to energy prices--experiencing considerable economic growth with spread effects to all but the smallest of communities.  Whether and how this prosperity reaches households in Iowa’s urban and rural communities that found themselves getting farther and farther behind in achieving the American dream is open to debate and study. In 2002, between 134,000 and 194,000 of Iowa’s children (about ¼ of all children in the state) were in families with before-tax incomes that were insufficient to cover basic household and work-related expenses.  Still…

1. Iowa ranks among the top half dozen states in multiple job holding, the annual number of hours worked by the average married couple with children exceeds the equivalent of two full-time jobs, about 380 hours per year more than is true for such couples nationwide.
2. 75% of Iowa women with children under the age of six were in the workforce in 2000—13 percentage points higher than for the nation as a whole.
3. In 2000, the proportion of female-headed households in Iowa was five percentage points lower than the national average.
4. The high school graduation rate for Iowans between the ages of 25 and 44 is about seven percentage points (91%) higher than for that age group nationally (84%). 

 

Thus, Iowas families work harder than the average American worker, so the reason that they are not getting ahead must be sought somewhere else.  Is it possible that the jobs that Iowans have do not pay all that well?  While we would get similar results if we examined the retail sector, the service sector, perhaps the most dramatic declines in wagesboth absolutelyand relative to the rest of the country is in manufacturing.  If we look at remuneration per manufacturing job, Iowa exceeded the nation as a whole in the 1970s, but in 1983 crossed below the national average and by the time of the brief recession in 1991 dipped over $4,000 per year below the national average.  Although Iowas manufacturing earnings began to recover after that, they recovered more slowly than occurred nationally (see figure below).  This suggests the need to look at economic development policies of the 1980s to determine whether they may have locked the rural areas in particular into low wage manufacturing with few forward and backward linkages to the local community.

Work in the sociology department since the 1990s has focused on the efficacy of smaller scale enterprises and business networks that are more integrated into the local economy as a way of benefitting rural and disadvantaged communities.  A great deal of research and outreach has focused on the soft aspects of community development which may facilitate economic development: social capital, the community capitals framework, quality jobs, self-development, business networks.

 

Growing diversity in Iowa communities
Since 1990, in particular, Iowa and other parts of the Midwest (as well as the South) have experienced a notable increase in immigrants that are eagerly taking jobs in industries experiencing a shortage of native-born workers. As the graph below shows, Latinos/Hispanics made the largest contribution to Iowas modest population growth during the 1990seven though non-Hispanic whites made up over 95% of the population and Latinos started the decade with 1.2 percent of the states population.  The Latino population grew about 150% from an initial 33,000 in 1990.  According the American Community Survey, the Latino population increased by around 40% between 2000 and 2006, which if extrapolated to 2010, will be a numerical increase at least as great as in the previous decade. Meatpacking jobs are the most notable of these positions.  Meatpacking is often the gateway for immigrants to enter Iowas labor force, particularly if they lack language skills and formal education adequate to get more highly skilled jobs.  However, they quickly expand into other economic activities, including entrepreneurial retail activities, which often revitalizes the downtown of small and medium-sized communities.  During the 1990s, six counties all but one non-metropolitanexperienced population growth that was entirely due to the growth in their Latino or Hispanic population.  Most were counties with meatpacking plants.  As baby boomers retire, labor shortagesabsent federal policies that would streamline and regularize in-migrationwill continue to grow, generating even more friction than presently between Latinos and Legalists who oppose such legislation and insist on sending unauthorized workers back to their countries of origin, no matter how impractical that would be. 
 

 

Work currently underway or recently completed on Latinos in Iowa include two pieces or research by Hannah Lewis:

1. An examination of four Mexican immigrant farmers, and
2. surveys in two Iowa communities of Latino immigrants with farm experience in their country of origin to determine if the are interested in farming in Iowa.

 

A multi-state study of the impact of recent raids on packing-plant towns by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the federal Department of Homeland Security.  Marshalltown, IA is one of those communities.  With leaders in Marshalltown, we plan to assist in develop a community-wide plan for how to react to any future raids and to disseminate the approach to other communities in Nebraska, and Minnesota, and beyond.

Practical community outreach programs through Sociology Extension build on ISU sociologists’ applied community research, such as that mentioned above.  Regarding Latinos in Iowa, through the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development and Agricultural and Natural Resource Extension, the following outreach projects are underway:

1. We are conducting a series of professional development workshops for Extension and key USDA and Non-government organization personnel to develop skills to work with Latino farmers to help them become more successful. Click here for more information.
2. Collaboration on a local food system that involves training and recruitment of vegetable growers, including Latinos, to produce for local food systems. Click here for more information.

 

Communities in transition and agriculture in transition then are the dual – and interrelated -- themes of ISU Sociology’s Extension program. 

ISU Extension | ISU Extension Community and Economic Development | ISU Extension to Agriculture & Natural Resources