Agricultural Dependence and the Population Turnaround: Evidence from the Great Plains

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Abstract
Throughout our nation's history there has been a net migration of people from nonmetropolitan to metropolitan counties. The industrialization of agriculture and subsequent reduced labor needs in farming were a major factor influencing this trend. Recently, this long established nonmetropolitan to metropolitan migration trend has been reversed. Data for the period 1940 to 1980 from 294 nonmetropolitan Great Plains counties show that reduced agricultural dependence is a major factor influencing this turnaround. The results indicate that counties heavily dependent on agricultural employment were about as likely to experience population declines during the 1970s as they were during earlier decades. There were fewer such counties, however, and thus their overall influence was reduced. The consequences of these findings for rural communities in major agricultural areas are discussed in this study.