The Midwesterner: Blogging the Global Midwest

A Sea Change in Midwestern Immigration

Just as President Obama and Congress are moving to solve the nation's immigration problem, the shape of the problem is changing.

Across the Midwest, companies -- mostly agriculture-related -- are hiring many fewer Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants. The reason: half or more of these immigrants were undocumented, and employers were both tired of verifying documents and afraid of the penalties if they slipped. Some highly-publicized raids by federal immigration agents reinforced their fears, as did a new policy of "silent raids" targeting employers themselves.

These Hispanics are increasingly being replaced in packinghouses and on farms by a spectrum of immigrants -- apparently legal -- from other countries. These include immigrants under national quotas, refugees, and winners of the government's visa lotteries. They come from around the world, mostly Africa and Asia, and include Pacific islanders, Congolese, Sudanese, Somalis, Vietnamese, Burmese, Ukrainian Pentecostals and others.

Evidence for this is mostly anecdotal, gleaned from visits and calls to Midwestern towns that once were on their way to being majority Hispanic: I'll fill in some of these details later. So far as I know, there's been little media attention to this shift. At the moment, it's a big story waiting to be reported. 

Saving the Countryside

A Midwestern public radio reporter phoned the other day with a really good question. Why do small towns and rural areas matter? she asked. Everybody talks about scarce federal and state resources. So are small towns and rural areas important enough to our future to be worth investing in?

She referred to a recent speech by Tom Vilsack, the agricuture secretary, who said that "it's a fact that rural America with a shrinking population is becoming less and less relevant to the politics of this country, and we had better recognize that and we better begin to reverse it."

Going Blue in the Driftless Area

By now, everyone is familiar with those post-election maps of the United States, showing most of the nation a bright red, solidly Republican, speckled with some small blue dots, where Democrats dwell. It looks like an overwhelmingly Republican country, but Democrats dominate, as they did last week, because the blue dots are cities, where people live. The red vastnesses are more rural, with fewer voters and more empty space.

But there are some exceptions, splotches of blue in rural, less-populated areas, Democratic outposts where you wouldn't expect them, Obama bastions unexplained by cities or university towns. Some of these are in New England, naturally, but also a patch in northern Montana, a swath along the Mississippi River between Mississippi and Arkansas, a Democratic stronghold in the iron range north of Duluth, where Minnesota juts out over Lake Superior.

And then there's one true curiosity -- a cluster of mostly rural counties and small towns in southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa, southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois. This also happens to fit exactly with a region called the Driftless Area, a four-state region around the Mississippi River. It's called the Driftless Area because the glaciers that flattened most of the rest of the Midwest gave it a pass, leaving a lovely hilly area carved by rivers, home to small farms and little towns.

More Good Books from Iowa

I like to keep an eye on the literature of my native Iowa, from the baseball fantasias of W.P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy) to the heart-breaking explorations of small-town life by Marilynne Robinson (Home, Gilead.) Recently, I wrote here about the short stories of J. Harley McIlrath, who does for farms what Marilynne Robinson does for the small farming towns.

Two new books are out, one deeply felt, the other riotously over the top. Both deserve a mention and, for Midwestern readers, a place on the shelf.

Mary Swander is the poet laureate of Iowa and an Iowa State professor. In 2007, she dispatched a class around the state of Iowa to interview residents, mostly about environmental issues. As time passed, the focus on the environment developed into a panorama on farming and how it's changing. They interviewed successful farmers and unsuccessful farmers, farmers who had lost the farm, organic farmers, workers in the state's meatpacking plants, townies, a winery owner. All were part of the changing rural landscape.

Pop Goes the Bubble

Yogi Berra has reminded us that "it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." With all respect for the Sage of St. Louis, I'm going to make a prediction that is sure to pan out. Here it is:

There is a big and growing bubble in farm land prices across the Midwest, and this bubble will pop, sooner or later. The result will be a rash of failed farms and rural misery.

We know this will happen because it's happened before, most recently thirty years ago. In the 1970s, a variety of factors -- mostly high grain prices -- sent farm land prices to record heights as farmers borrowed heavily to buy as much land as they could. Then, in the early 1980s, other factors -- mostly falling grain prices -- left many indebted farmers unable to pay their debts.

The result: thousands of Midwestern farms failed. Banks foreclosed. Many small rural banks, holding too many bad loans, also failed. Newspapers reported farmer suicides, even the murder of bankers by distraught farmers. Farm foreclosure sales became common social events. Most big farmers weathered the storm, but medium-sized farmers, whose debt soared by 250 percent in the 1970s, collapsed. Usually, they were bought by bigger farmers next door, accelerating the consolidation of Midwestern farming and the decline in rural population.

Some Summer Stories

Vacation's over and it's time to catch up on the news. There's a lot of it, from the weather, to ethanol, to vacant airports: whatever happened to the dog days of summer? Herewith some thoughts on stories that popped out of newspapers awaiting me on my return.

Every Midwesterner knows we're in a hot dry summer. But it's farmers, suffering through a drought after that hot-and-cold spring, who are truly singing the blues. Talk to vendors in farmers' markets and you hear nothing but woe. Peaches are all but wiped out. The apple crop is down. U-Pick-Em blueberry farms are turning away tourists: the crop this year is too small.

The corn crop is the big story. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says about 40 percent of the crop in Iowa is in "good or excellent" shape, compared to 82 percent last year. Other states report the same. If we don't get big rains soon -- not just showers, but true soakers -- it's going to get worse.

Greed on the Grange

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm a fan of farmers in general and big farmers in particular. Part of this, I suppose, goes with having roots in Iowa soil. But mostly, it's a reaction to the smug superiority displayed in print by Michael Pollan and other writers, who disdain any farmer who'd actually like to earn a living from farming, and in person by the urban farmers and market gardeners who feel the only real agriculture has to be small, organic and shoestring. In my book, big farmers who see it as their task to feed the world -- who provide the yields and exports that keep starvation at bay around the globe -- are heroes.

But sometimes, oh my, these big farmers -- or rather, the lobbyists and politicians who speak for them -- sure do make it hard to stand up and cheer.

A Frost on Global Markets

Across the farmlands of the Midwest, global warming just got mixed with globalization. The result shapes up as a strange and contentious year with a potential impact on food prices around the globe.

As every Midwesterner knows, we're living through a weird spring. A relatively dry winter was followed by temperatures which soared into the 70s in March and stayed there. In Chicago, trees that stay bare through April sprouted leaves in March. On fruit farms, apricot and other trees flowered three to four weeks ahead of schedule.

For many corn farmers, the balmy climate provided a temptation too strong to resist. Some played it safe, delaying planting until late April, to get past the frequent April frosts. But early planting can extend the growing season and produce a bigger crop later on, so many farmers were in the fields in March, a month ahead of schedule. By mid-April, fully 59 percent of the Illinois corn crop had already been planted, compared to only 10 percent last year and 17 percent in a normal year.

Icarus on the Farm

All farmers keep a constant eye on the horizon, watching for the cloud that might bring rain to nourish the crops or hail to destroy them. As the new year dawned, the most ominous financial cloud in a generation appeared on the horizon of the rural Midwest. Even farmers too young to remember the last big storm would be wise to get their financial crib doors shut before the next one hits.

It seems cruel to sound this warning just now. At the moment, farming is the one prosperous part of the American economy. Farmers are getting prices which, if not records, are very high. Corn is rising again, to about $6.50 a bushel. Soybeans are also up, to about $12 a bushel. The price of farm land has never been higher. The average price of an Iowa acre shot up no less than 32 percent last year, to $6,700: Illinois and Indiana aren't far behind. Sales of $10,000 per acre or more are common.

The real estate market may be dead everywhere else, but not down on the farm. In a recession-weary nation, it's great to be a Midwestern farmer. 

So what's the problem? What's the cloud that threatens to rain on the rural picnic?

A Farmer's Tale: Political Folly and the Fed

I once spent a long, agonizing evening in a decaying farmhouse in eastern Iowa, watching a young farmer's life fall apart.

I still think of that farmer, nearly 30 years later, whenever I hear presidential candidates like Rick Perry and Ron Paul condemn the Federal Reserve Bank as the root of all evil and its policies as unconstitutional. Maybe they don't know they're playing with fire. Maybe they do, and don't care.