Will rural Iowa wither as big ag becomes bigger, squeezing out farms in the middle?

On a sweltering morning, John Gilbert bottle-feeds calves with a small, converted bucket, while his 3-year-old granddaughter struggles to hold a wriggling kitten. Two generations of Gilberts milk and care for nearly 100 Brown Swiss cows, nicknamed "the gals," raise pigs in a hoop barn and grow oats, alfalfa, corn and soybeans on 770 acres.The extended-family farm operation is what many imagine is dotting Iowa's countryside — fathers and sons, husbands and wives, working together to raise animals, crops and kids.But that picture is changing rapidly, as family-run midsized farms give way to bigger agriculture operations and smaller hobby acreages.Farm consolidation has emptied out rural Iowa for decades. But the hollowing out of midsized farms places even more stress on the quality of life in rural and small-town Iowa.As farm families dwindle, so do shops, schools and doctors' offices. And small factories, long a companion to farms as the lifeblood of the rural economy, locate elsewhere in search of workers.