Celebrating USDA’s 150 Years in Kansas

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visits the Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium at Kansas State University, in Manhattan, KS, on Tuesday, April 10, 2012. USDA Photo by Jessica Bowser.

Continuing with the theme of Secretary Vilsack on the Yahoo list of useless college majors, a student group at Texas A&M started an advocacy group called Farmers Fight.  “Farmers Fight is a student-led initiative at Texas A&M to reconnect American society to the world of agriculture. Beginning with university students, Farmers Fight encourages consumers to ask where their food comes from, and give students, faculty, public officials, and farmers and ranchers an opportunity to become "agvocates" for the agriculture community.”  They created the YouTube video below in hopes that this message could go out all over.

9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.         House Committee on Agriculture Farm Bill Field Hearing
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.                Lunch Break
1:00 - 3:00 p.m.                 Agriculture Town Hall Meeting

1.     Two-thirds of KS counties experienced peak population in 1930 or before

2.     One-third of KS counties have experienced negative net migration in every decade since 1950

3.     Of KS counties:

a.       Only nine counties grew above the national average between 2000 and 2010

b.       Nineteen other Kansas counties grew some

c.       The rest experienced population decline

d.       Only three rural Kansas counties grew more than 1% since 2000

The population decline in most Kansas counties gives rise to what Dr. Kulcsár refers to as the “Vicious Cycle”:

In this cycle, the declining population causes the number of consumers to decrease. The decrease in consumers means that the number of businesses decline. This in turn creates a lack of community revenue, which causes a loss of services in the community. Because the community is losing businesses, jobs, and services – more people leave, and, thus, the vicious cycle continues.

While not a pleasant thing to think about, I believe we see this happening in most Kansas counties. But, rather than looking at this as a never ending closed loop, what if we viewed the vicious cycle as a roundabout – where the cycle can be influenced by changes at each node/intersection? If we can improve the performance of at least one, if not, more of the nodes, won’t that help to mitigate if not reverse the vicious cycle?

For example, what if there was an organization that helped:

• Farms and businesses to run more efficiently, thus allowing for a better local economy?

• Community members to live healthier lives, thus freeing up dollars generally allocated to healthcare for other high valued products and/or community services?

• Families spend and invest their income more responsibly, thus giving businesses a wealthier supply of consumers?

• Communities and homeowners to beautify the natural landscape and their neighborhoods, thus allowing for a greater sense of community pride while enhancing the local economy?

• Provide youth and families with more to do, meaningful educational activities, and leadership development experiences, thus creating better community connectedness?

• Develop the skills of community leaders, thus allowing for better community planning, more efficient use of revenue, and better service provision?

Wouldn’t that organization help to minimize, if not even reverse the effects of the vicious cycle? Wouldn’t that organization be indispensable for Kansans?

Of course, K-State Research and Extension is that organization. Our agriculture and horticulture colleagues work with managers to make farms, orchards, and, in turn, rural economies thrive. Our family and consumer science professionals help families to make better health and financial decisions, which helps to provide businesses with a healthier and wealthier supply of customers. Our horticulture and natural resource professionals help to enhance the economy and develop community pride by enabling Kansans to make better natural resource, community garden, home gardening and landscaping decisions. Our 4-H and youth development colleagues provide youth and families with fun educational activities that help develop community connectedness and our future community leaders. Meanwhile, our community development professionals facilitate community leadership skill development, which enables our community leaders to make the appropriate decisions needed to make our communities thrive, which, in turn, helps to maintain current – and even attract new – community members.

Always remember, the work we do is critically important to the success and wellbeing of Kansans and Kansas. Have we reversed the vicious cycle yet? No. It will take time. To succeed, we must continue to do what we do best – develop, implement and evaluate the extension programs Kansans need to enable them to identify and solve their own problems. If we are persistent and do our jobs to the best of our ability, we can and will make a difference!--Gregg Hadley ghadley@ksu.edu

At the Spring Action Conference last week, Dr. László J. Kulcsár, Associate Professor, Sociology, Kansas State University, provided an engaging presentation on population dynamics in rural Kansas. The presentation is posted on the new Programming Web page, http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/programming/. --Barbara Stone bjstone@ksu.edu

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