Last week, the American Bankers Association (ABA) released its annual Farm Bank Performance Report. Today’s update includes several highlights from the ABA update. The ABA report indicated that, “The U.S. [node:read-more:link]
Rural counties — particularly in the Midwest and Northeast of the U.S. — are losing people due to higher death rates than birth rates and more people moving away than moving in. The outlook: The 2020 census is likely to show the extent of this drastic trend. "Barring a significant reversal in the next few years," Richard Fry of the Pew Research Center tells Axios, "the share of the population living in rural counties will be less than it was in 2010 ... [node:read-more:link]
New Census Bureau population estimates for counties and metropolitan areasconfirm that after concentrating in big cities and major metro areas during the first part of this decade, Americans are spreading out again into suburbs, exurbs, and smaller towns and rural areas.The new numbers, which track annual population trends through July 2018, indicate that for the first time this decade, the nation’s three largest metropolitan areas—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—all lost population. [node:read-more:link]
The Michigan Attorney General’s Office has received nearly 20 complaints of alleged puppy scams since 2017, including two reported so far in 2019. The money lost can be significant. Consumers reported losing as much as $1,200 to scammers who were reportedly selling pets online, according to a 2018 report by the Better Business Bureau. In one case, a victim lost $5,000. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, at the Michigan Humane Society in Detroit on Thursday, said many consumers do not realize they may be doing business online with “puppy con artists.” [node:read-more:link]
The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit aimed at conserving land and water, is acquiring 100,000 acres of forest split between southeast Kentucky and northeast Tennessee. It will be one of the largest land conservation and ecological restoration projects for the organization in the Central Appalachians, according to a news release.It will double the amount of Kentucky acreage the organization has protected, either through acquisition or conservancy easements that prevent certain development of the land. [node:read-more:link]
A recent New York Times opinion piece suggested that no one knows how stop the undermining of rural America from economic forces. While these forces have driven a growing divide between urban and rural communities, we can’t allow the past or the scale of the challenge deter from incremental progress or big ideas.It is time to have a serious and thoughtful discussion about the issues that are affecting small towns across this country. In an era of fragmentation, isolation and divisiveness, it is easy to discount rural communities and the people who live in them. [node:read-more:link]
The so-called bomb cyclone that brought heavy snow, blizzard conditions and major flooding to the Midwest in March landed with a resounding meteorological “ka-boom!” and became one of two billion-dollar weather and climate disasters this year. The other was a severe storm that struck the Northeast, Southeast and Ohio Valley in late February. And it’s only April. [node:read-more:link]
Federal programs are critical for helping those with low incomes make ends meet. But not all such programs are equally effective at reducing poverty, nor do they benefit all of those in poverty uniformly. [node:read-more:link]
Last year, President Donald Trump pardoned the ranchers, ending the jail time they were still serving for lighting wildland fires that endangered federal firefighters. Then, in January, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reissued their grazing permit, and the Hammonds returned to ranching. On April 9, the BLM released a new environmental assessment for grazing on the Hammond Allotment, one of the largest of several the family uses in the high desert of eastern Oregon, where rolling hills are broken by rocky outcroppings. [node:read-more:link]
Petting zoos could be a breeding ground for drug-resistant superbugs after a study found more than one in 10 animals carrying at least one strain of bacteria capable of withstanding multiple important antibiotics. Israeli researchers collected samples from 228 animals across eight randomly chosen petting zoos, and concluded they were “reservoirs” for microbes that could easily spread from children to vulnerable relatives. [node:read-more:link]
