Rural towns drying up
Over a decade ago, I wandered into a small town in western Kansas. Its entire downtown was borded up. So was the Catholic school. I didn't see a public school. The Catholic Church and grain elevator/co-op seemed to be the only institutions still operating.
What happened? The industrialization of agriculture is what happened. A hunderd years ago, there was a farm family for about every 80-160 acres. Now it takes a couple thousand acres to support a full-time farmer.
Well, that town existed based on providing goods and services for the farm families in a twenty or so mile radius. With farms consolodating something like 25-1, there just aren't enough farm families to keep much but the grain elevator going, and I was told that even the church was on shaky ground.
Seems like in western Kansas, there are whole counties with fewer than 2000 residents, and it would take something like all the residents in ten or so counties out there to fill up a university basketball arena.
