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Tagged: rural

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Business Beat

5:23 pm

Wed May 1, 2013

Rural Kansas tries to entice businesses; Community rallies to stop fort's job cuts

By Kristofor Husted

Photo 3: Members of the communities surrounding Fort Leonard Wood gathered Tuesday to discuss the U.S. Army proposal to remove troops from the fort. Under the proposal, the fort could lose as many of 4,000 of its troops.Edit | Remove

Business

4:46 pm

Wed May 1, 2013

Kansas seeks turning point for rural communities

Credit Photo courtesy Rebecca Brown

Kendra Short (center) works with students on a dance number at her studio in Belleville, Kan. Short and her husband Shannon have applied for the Rural Opportunity Zone program in Republic County, and are building a house.

By Justine Greve

When the Homestead Act of 1862 made land in the Great Plains virtually free, people rushed in to settle rural Kansas. But 150 years later, the dust has truly settled. Between 2000 and 2010, more than half of Kansas counties declined in population — many by 10 percent or more.

Intersection

5:31 pm

Mon December 3, 2012

Future prospects for young rural residents

By Rehman Tungekar

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Agriculture

5:37 pm

Thu September 27, 2012

Mud and Moonscape: Missouri towns struggle with flood recovery

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Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

"It is pure sand dunes," Atchison County Sheriff Dennis Martin said, of Corning, Mo. land still covered with sand a year after surging Missouri River waters receded. "Before the weeds started growing up, it looked like the moon."

Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

Down the road, St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church is one of the flood's casualties. It closed after waters rose three feet high. Then the water sat there for months.

Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

A mud line marks how high the waters went on the 1893 Gothic Revival building.

Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

A toilet graveyard sits behind the church.

Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

The one-room 1912 schoolhouse behind the church is still caked with dried-up mud the river left behind. It also sustained water damage in 1952 and 1993.

Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

The waters put this schoolhouse stove under water. Church elders don't know if and how they will re-open the church.

Credit Abbie Fentress Swanson/Harvest Public Media

But Sheriff Martin says Corning is resilient. "We're going to see crop ground ... that has been renovated and the expense they are going to try to get this back in production has got to be phenomenal. But it is their life … it’s their home."

By Abbie Fentress Swanson

Back in April, Harvest Public Media’s Grant Gerlock headed to Tekamah, Neb., to see how planting was going for farmers on the Missouri River floodplain. The river's surging waters put thousands of farm acres in Nebraska under water last summer, causing more than $100 million in crop losses in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

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