Once upon a time, the founders of this country dreamed of a land that spread from sea to shining sea. They envisioned prosperous farms and ranches covering the land like a beautiful handmade quilt. Vibrant villages filled with shops, schools and churches provided community and a sense of place, making America the finest place on earth to live and raise a family, no matter where you were placed on that beautiful quilt. What a beautiful dream!

There are those that would say it was “only” a dream. I’m not one of those. Oh, yes, it is a certainty that the dream was shattered, but that doesn’t mean we should let it go. Back in those terrible days of runaway inflation and the economic chaos that followed in the early 1980s, I almost lost the dream. It had faded from consciousness, but somewhere in the darkness, a dim light still flickered.

“How did you get yourself into this situation?” the unconscious lender asked when he pulled the rug out from under my family in 1981. He thought I was just one more bit of chaff to be rendered from the harvest. The common line of the day was that agriculture was in fine shape. The inefficient farmers were just being weeded out to make room for the bigger, better operators.

I held out with 10 cows and calves after liquidating my herd to pay the debt and regain some breathing room to build again. It was never easy, but you could say I have a stubborn streak, and I sure wasn’t inefficient. Those of us who are left today can tell the stories of good farmers and ranchers who were forced out.

Government policies have come and gone. Prices have moved upwards only to be dashed just as something like a livable wage began to emerge.

Presently, we have good cattle prices. The last time that happened, imports were opened up and foreign beef flooded in to break the market. You wonder whose side are they on? Do the powers that be really want to break the heart of the very soul of America?

I don’t really think that the economists who shaped the farm programs wanted to break farmers. I just think that they didn’t know what they were doing. It’s the same for those who are trying to revive rural Kansas communities.

Rural Opportunity Zones were initiated in 2012 to reverse, or at the very least, slow rural depopulation. The abysmal result after 10 years showed a continued outflow in population that far exceeded the 1,400 people the program had drawn into the state.

There are other programs in the state and across the nation that are attempting to solve the problem of rural depopulation. A nationwide coalition of organizations called “Thrive America” has brought some of the best minds together to tackle intricate problems that wouldn’t need to be addressed if they only recognized the core failure of inadequate purchasing power on the farm.

These well-intentioned efforts frankly miss the mark. Under the Kansas Department of Commerce, the Office of Rural Prosperity is charged with advocating for and promoting “efforts designed to aid rural improvements.” Perhaps they should advocate for a small farm-friendly federal farm program.

Take a drive across the Great Plains. It doesn’t really matter what route you take. Decay and ruin is all too common.

Certainly there are stalwart folks who refuse to give up. They should be applauded for all that they do in the face of continued depopulation.

The weakest link is always the one that must be repaired first. Repair that link and the chain will continue to perform its function. One wouldn’t add reinforcement to a link that was strong and durable, so why haven’t we reinforced the weakest link of agricultural production in the national economy? If the nation desires to be strong, if we truly want to be that shining light on the hill, why aren’t we seeking to strengthen the nation by strengthening its very foundation?

I’ve always found it strange that the phantom world of stocks and bonds and paper trade has more perceived value than the production of the essential wealth of food and fiber.

In our upside down world, real wealth is subjugated to the whims of individuals who live in a fantasy world — one that has been created from the ashes of the very same vanquished producers of that real wealth. They have convinced themselves they are the ones who live in the real, dog-eat-dog world, while producing nothing of real substance. It’s all slight of hand, mind boggling manipulation that produces the illusion of an incredibly misplaced perception of reality, for true wealth comes from the tangible production of the earth.

Agricultural leaders tell us that nothing can be done to return America to a small farm economy, an era long past. The honest truth is that their policies have failed us, one and all. That failure has produced a landscape of empty farmsteads and ghost towns that once supported us on The Way West.

“The Cowboy” Jim Gray can be reached at 220 21st Rd., Geneseo, KS 67444, (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans. com.