Midseason

We're nearly half-way through our interviews!

We've talked to farmers growing a variety of animals and crops in a variety of ways across Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Iowa. Beyond the farm gate, we've been gathering together community focus groups, including women in ag, agrarian students, BIPOC farmers, religious leaders, and ag community members interested in protecting local landscapes and waterways.

We've listened to over a hundred people across all walks of rural life at a historical crossroads for the country. Conversations ranged from the state of agriculture to increasing bouts of floods and droughts, changing supply lines, farm succession, community life, and COVID. Unlike what some quarters may mistake, rural life is a diverse pot of ideas and attitudes about these topics and more.

We're very much looking forward to continuing these conversations through Illinois, Minnesota, and Kansas. We're also interested in getting the chance to report our preliminary results to the study counties that have been generous enough to engage in such illuminating conversation.

We'll be putting together what we've learned from these conversations, the county histories we're gathering, and the statistical analyses we've been conducting.

Our analyses should offer these counties--and the rest of the country--insight on what impacts on-farm practices and the broader state of rural America may be having on farmer and community health place-to-place. How are the state of things impacting county efforts to adapt to changes in the environment? Do rural residents share the same right to good health outcomes?

We'll be aiming to capture important parts of the big picture that can help rural communities tailor their own decisions about next steps toward a healthy ag future.

Rob Wallace, Carolyn Betz, and Serena Stein
The Midwest Healthy Ag research team