Past Performance and Future Rural Health

Historians tell us that if we don't learn about history, we're bound to repeat it. So lately I've been delving into old research papers here at the Center for Rural Affairs, hoping past research will inform our current research on health care. What I've found so far is astounding.

My colleagues frequently talk about the profound and prophetic report on vertical integration of hog production, called, Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow? Written in 1975, the title is a play on the act of "sitting up with a sow" if she is having a hard time birthing her piglets, but in this case refers to holding corporations accountable when it comes to unethical business practices that force out family farmers. The report accurately predicted the most onerous impacts that consolidation and vertical integration would have on family farm hog producers over the last 30 years.

Here is a short excerpt:

Overall, the emerging breeding stock industry is a hustle which confinement has made possible. It is significant that a number of confinement units identified here are well outside of traditional hog producing areas. This partly reflects the potential of confinement for accommodating livestock production to environmentally harsh areas...

The combination of breeding stock specialization, large scale production and movement into new areas all point to more loss of producer independence.

Translation - as farmers become more specialized, are further away from truly competitive markets, and expensive technology allows more animals to be crammed into tighter quarters, we will see fewer skilled producers, more investors, and a loss of independence for those producers. While this seems evident to us now in hindsight, it was not at all clear in 1975 that this would be the case.

In the same vein as Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow?, came Wheels of Fortune in 1976. The report examined the impact of center pivot irrigation development on the ownership and control of farmland and water rights.

It found center pivot irrigation to be a more capital intensive form of irrigation, and the popularity of the method was driving concentration of land by non-farm investors. Again, spot on conclusions about what has happened to agriculture in the last 30 years - fewer farmers, larger land holdings, more absentee and corporate control (if not outright ownership) of farming operations.

Then there was the Small Farm Energy Primer, written in 1980 as farmers were struggling to pay the high cost of energy amidst expanding use of energy-intensive farming technology. The complexity and expense of energy-intensive farming make intimidating barriers to young couples trying to get a start in farming.

Thus small family farmers are directly threatened by large-scale mechanization developed in an era of cheap energy. In response, the small family farmer can make use of renewable energy resources, demonstrating that skills and resourcefulness - the human factor - is once again at a premium in agriculture. Again, all obvious conclusions now that were anything but obvious at the time.

Our research lately has been about the dynamics of our current health care system and how reform will effect rural people and communities. We have released two papers so far, with more on the way in the coming months.

In Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity in Rural America, we review the trends indicating that overall obesity is more prevalent for rural adults than urban adults. This is a particular concern since obesity leads to other preventable diseases and is the second leading cause of death in the United States.

Implied in the research is that if we don't take some of the actions this paper discusses to control rural obesity within the upcoming health reform, rural Americans will die more frequently and be sicker as a result.

In our second paper, The Top 10 Rural Issues for Health Care Reform, we investigate the numerous unique health care issues facing rural people and rural places. Any health reform must consider the needs of rural communities and how they differ from our urban counterparts, and this paper explores how these differences necessitate special solutions. This paper is also condensed into a fact sheet.

Is this research as on target as it has been in the past? Not only is our track record good, but we rely on the same principles of research as we always have.

We are committed to rigorous analysis and our research is not guided by the winds of politics. And because we live and work the rural topics we research, we have the experiences of our families, friends and neighbors to corroborate our analysis. As the health care debate grows, you can judge for yourself whether we hit our mark.