Coronavirus Produces Mixed Economic Results in Small Towns, Doesn’t Promise Great Rural Revival

As they open South Dakota News Watch‘s analysis of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on South Dakota’s small towns, Nick Lowrey and Bart Pfankuch find some evidence of the buy-local phenomenon in Miller, as observed by Rexall Drug co-owner and pharmacist Travis Anderberg:

While the pandemic has hobbled many businesses, some others have flourished. By the end of May, both the towns of Miller and Wessington Springs had actually taken in more sales-tax revenue so far in 2020 than in 2019. Dozens of small towns around South Dakota also had seen increases in sales-tax revenue as residents increasingly turned to local stores for groceries and hardware.

While his business has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, Anderberg attributed Miller’s sales-tax bump to more residents shopping local and traveling less.

“I’ve noticed that they’ve been very supportive of the local businesses, and I would like to see it stay that way,” Anderberg said. “We are optimistic that that’ll be the case when things get back open” [Nick Lowrey and Bart Pfankuch, “Small Towns in S.D. Facing Big Challenged amid Pandemic and Historic Declines,” South Dakota News Watch, 2020.06.16].

Newell butcher Randy Boesem is also seeing more business:

In one recent day, he butchered three cows and four pigs owned by ranchers who couldn’t get their animals butchered anywhere else and said he is booked through the summer with processing jobs [Lowrey and Pfankuch, 2020.06.16].

But Alcester isn’t getting a coronavirus boom:

In Alcester, a town of 755 on U.S. 11 about 50 miles south of Sioux Falls, the pandemic’s effect can clearly be seen in sales-tax collections. Compared with 2019, Alcester saw a 27% decline in sales-tax collections through May 2020, according to the South Dakota Department of Revenue. Pandemic-related closures of several key downtown businesses were largely responsible for the losses, said Alcester Finance Officer Pat Jurrens [Lowrey and Pfankuch, 2020.06.16].

The economic data from the pandemic is clearly mixed… and none of us want coronavirus to stick around long enough to give us lots more data on whether rural communities can turn pandemic social distancing into a growth opportunity. But remember Dr. Joseph Bottum’s warning from the good old days (a mere year and a half ago) that a resumption of interest in rural living won’t save most small towns. Coronavirus has shown us that going just a few weeks without restaurants and urban shopping and big parties and stadium sporting events drives lots of people bonkers. Convincing people to move to Miller, Newell, or Alcester will require convincing them to give up many of those things for good or at least accepting that for much of that urban enjoyment, they’ll have to drive an hour or six on the weekends when they can get away from the ranch.

Even if coronavirus drives some urban folks to change their priorities and make sacrifices to live in rural South Dakota, they still won’t be unplugged from the global economy and the risks of coronavirus—just ask the folks in Huron and Alpena. Even here in Kristi Noem’s Freedom™topia, lives and livelihoods are still connected to the big world. People aren’t going to drop everything and move to Miller to make wicker baskets and tomatoes for their neighbors (well, they might if the oil runs out and we hard-land in James Howard Kunstler’s World Made by Hand instead of crash-landing in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road). They’re going to want specialized restaurants and unique consumer goods that small-town entrepreneurs can’t provide. They’re going to want Vikings games and Paul McCartney, not just Legion baseball and Johnny Holm at the street dance.

Any small-town revival will depend on global economic revival. It will also depend on major economic changes and government investments. If we expect city dwellers to move here and work remotely, we’ll need bigger government investments in broadband to support their production and consumption. That production and consumption will have to move beyond agriculture to be more supportive of intellectual, creative work. South Dakota will have to follow up on the Janklow revolution and see and sell itself as a great place to do finance, data science, health care, and other professional work that requires stronger investments in education.

Even amidst that economic diversification, if we want more people to come farm and ranch here, we’ll have to see more consumer interest in and government support for small-scale agriculture, unplugging production from the oppressive Monsanto/Smithfield corporate assembly line and getting both customers and the state to support smaller producers making food in our backyards. Note that the young aspiring agripreneur Lowrey and Pfankuch talk to in Wessington Springs, Logan Wolter, can’t make it in the standard Big Ag model, because twentysomethings like him can’t afford to buy the huge land holdings and equipment necessary to participate in the ag-industrial complex. Wolter told Governor Noem at her Ag Summit last summer that the state should provide finance or incentive programs to help young people get into farming and ranching. (Alas, you have to have 5,000 hogs to get this Governor’s attention.)

Reversing the trend of small-town decline hasn’t happened from wistful wishes, and it won’t happen from one pandemic. Getting people to move back to places they’ve been abandoning for decades for a host of economic and cultural reasons will require a revolution in the kinds of economic activities we support with our personal spending and our government investment.