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Toward New Horizons - Agriculture and Natural Resources
2007-11-04
The economy of the Northern Great Plains region of the United States and is strongly linked to its primary natural resource assets —land and water. Settlement came to the northern prairies based first upon the fur trade, but development of the land for agriculture production quickly became the driving force behind the Region’s population growth and economic development. It is important to recognize that settlement and development patterns in the Region were linked to the transportation systems of the day. The Region saw rapid growth in the fur trade when trade shifted from canoes to Red River ox carts, which made possible the regular movement of raw materials (furs) out of the Region to the cities of the two nations and to the world. Agriculture development in the Region came with the railroads, which provided an efficient method of shipping grain and cattle to growing urban populations.
For much of the Region, the early 20th century was the time when the greatest number of people, farms and thriving rural communities existed. The 1930s saw the beginning of migration of rural people off the farm or out of smaller communities to larger cities within the Region, or to opportunities elsewhere in the nation or the world. That migration continues today. It continues to be fueled by a number of factors, including recognition that the most arid portions of the entire Great Plains cannot profitably sustain the number of small farms originally established; development of more efficient farming methods and technologies that require fewer people to farm larger tracts of land; limited employment opportunities in rural communities; and a growing desire for attractive amenities in more urban or specific rural settings.
Strategies to address the Region’s rural population decline, poor farm income levels, and limited job opportunities have been put forward since the 1930s. Many have been successfully implemented and many not. Yet, migration from rural to urban and from farm to town continues. The continuing crisis in farm and ranch income and the clear shift in political strength nationally from rural to urban/suburban make it clear that traditional production agriculture and small rural towns on the Northern Great Plains face serious challenges to their economic and social survival. Though many of the Region’s larger cities are prospering, leaders on the Northern Great Plains are being asked, perhaps for the first time, to completely rethink our relationship with the land, the role of agriculture in our nations’ and world’s food systems, and the services we provide to our nations.
To this end, the Agriculture and Natural Resources section of this report focuses on trends that will have practical implications for the Region’s agricultural economy in a ten-year time frame, and the importance of the transportation system in taking advantage of these emerging opportunities. We look at the global context in which regional agriculture must compete, as well as national and regional trends that will affect agriculture on the Northern Great Plains
