Kansas News Service, Oct. 25, 2019

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Bigger farms, fewer townsfolk In many ways, the successes of modern agriculture are killing rural communities across the Great Plains. From GMOs to GPS precision, advances make it possible for a lone farmer to work ever-larger stretches of land. That inexorable trend of fewer and bigger farms means the small cities and towns that sprung up across vast swaths of Kansas saw their economic lifelines fade away. Many large, commodity farmers insist they must continue expansion to keep their operations solvent. Tight margins and volatile markets tell them that increasing size offers their only chance at survival. Meanwhile, some farmers see cultivating tens of thousands of acres of beans, corn or wheat as a hamster wheel existence. They’ve shifted to boutique, and often organic crops sold more directly to families rather than to large commodity traders. Those small-scale outfits offer some hope to their nearby towns. They’re a promise of more farmers per acre, more customers for the shops in town, more kids for the schools, more energy to a community. But they’re far less efficient on a food-to-acre basis. That phenomenon anchors the latest episode of the second season of our “My Fellow Kansans” podcast. It’s available from whatever app you plug into. Subscribe. Share. Review. Let us know what you think. — Scott Canon, Kansas News Service managing editor   "It bothers me ... that what we're doing on our farm is, in a way, contributing to the decline of the local community." — Don Hineman, a state representative and the operator of a large farm, in the second episode of the new season of My Fellow Kansans   Principal interest You’re not rich. Neither is your family. You don’t have credit, but you need cash pronto. Payday loans fill a need. But those storefront lenders also can charge extortionary interest fees, sucking the poor into nearly inescapable cycles of deepening debt. A coalition of nonprofit groups hopes this marks the year they convince Kansas lawmakers to impose tighter payday loan regulation. Read about it. Share Tweet Forward Kansas Compromise? The majority of the Kansas Legislature has made clear it’s ready to expand Medicaid. The conservative Republicans who dominate leadership positions in the House and Senate, on the other hand, have stopped that from happening. Lawmakers left Topeka in late spring promising to use their offseason to craft a plan that could break through the legislative bottleneck. A key Republican has crafted a plan — one that nudges more people into the job market and intertwines Medicaid with the private insurance market. Now we’ll see what moves forward. Here’s the latest. Share Tweet Forward Sparks flew Investigators concluded that it was a welding torch that sparked the fire in Holcomb, Kansas, which shut down the Tyson meatpacking plant in early August. The fire closed the western Kansas plant, which slaughters about 5% percent of the nation’s cattle, for weeks. That was followed by a temporary spike in beef prices across the country. Learn more. Share Tweet Forward