U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack used a new USDA report, Rural America at a Glance, 2013 Edition, to call on Congress to finish work on the Farm Bill and “reverse troubling demographic and economic patterns in rural America.”
According to the report, which is produced annually by USDA’s Economic Research Service based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, since the start of 2011, net job growth in non-metro areas has been near zero while employment has grown at a meager 1.4 percent annual rate in metro regions. At the same time, non-metro areas experienced population loss driven by a net migration decrease.
Between the first halves of 2012 and 2013, the number of employed people increased in 41 percent of non-metro counties and fell or was unchanged in the remaining 59 percent of counties. Non-metro job losses were especially large in Arkansas, Illinois and Arizona, while non-metro gains were more common in the Northern Plains and in the Southwest, according to the report.

According to the report, between April 2010 and July 2012, the estimated population of non-metro counties fell by just fewer than 44,000, or 0.09 percent. While quite small, this downward trend is the first recorded period of non-metro population loss. What does this mean for rural communities? According to the report, this type of population loss could “reduce demand for jobs, diminishes the quality of the workforce and raises the per capital costs of providing services.”
“Today’s annual report by USDA’s Economic Research Service – Rural America at a Glance, 2013 Edition- highlights the critical need for a new Food, Farm and Jobs Bill that will help to reverse troubling demographic and economic patterns in rural America,” said Secretary Vilsack.
“Too many people still have trouble finding a good job. The populations of too many small towns and rural communities are shrinking. This is just one more reminder that we need a national commitment to create new opportunities in rural America that keeps folks in our small towns and reignites economic growth across the nation.
“It would invest in the future of Main Street businesses and communities. Rural America needs a new Farm Bill now, to meet these modern challenges head on and chart a pathway for future economic success across our rural areas.”–Mary Soukup, Drovers Cattle Network

United States Senators from  Missouri remembered veterans via social media on Monday.

Senator McCaskill wrote on Facebook, “For more than two centuries, through times of turmoil and peace, America has counted on its troops to protect and preserve the freedoms we often take for granted. And over the past decade, we’ve seen thousands of service members return home to civilian life as new veterans. It’s nothing short of a moral obligation that we stand by our veterans as they have stood by us. As I spend the holiday weekend with my kids and grandkids, I’ll take pride in sharing with them—just as my parents and grandparents shared with me—how the sacrifice our military veterans have made for our country is something to be honored and remembered. And I’ll continue fighting to ensure Congress lives up to its promises to our nation’s veterans.” -Claire

Senator Blunt posted this statement on his Facebook page, “As we mark Veterans Day today, please join me in thanking our nation’s veterans, active duty servicemen and women, and their families for their commitment to keep America safe. We owe these brave men and women a great debt of gratitude for their selfless sacrifices.”

(AP) — Serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin is getting support from an unlikely source: Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who was paralyzed by a bullet apparently fired by Franklin 35 years ago.

Franklin is set for execution Nov. 20 in Missouri for a 1977 murder. But he’s claimed responsibility for killing more than 20 people. He admitted shooting Flynt in 1978 but was never charged.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a court motion Saturday on Flynt’s behalf, arguing that Missouri’s execution process is too secretive and demanding more information be made public.

Flynt recently wrote a column in the Hollywood Reporter, saying execution was vengeance, not justice.

Franklin has been convicted in five murders. He was given the death penalty for killing Gerald Gordon outside a St. Louis-area synagogue in 1977.

Amazon is teaming up with the U.S. Postal Service to deliver packages on Sundays.

The Seattle company says Sunday delivery will be available this week to customers in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. Amazon and the Postal Service plan to roll out service to “a large portion of the U.S. population” next year, including Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Phoenix.

Amazon expects Sunday delivery to be popular with members of its Prime service, which costs $79 a year and comes with free two-day shipping on many items on the site as well as access to Amazon’s TV and movie streaming service. But Sunday delivery will be available to all Amazon customers.

“For Prime members, it’s free, for non-Prime members, it’s like any other delivery day of the week,” said Dave Clark, vice president of worldwide operations and customer service at Amazon. It won’t cost extra to get a package delivered on a Sunday.

Sunday delivery has been on Amazon’s wish list for a long time. The company does not disclose the percentage of its packages that are delivered on weekends, but Clark expects customers “to be delighted that they will get their products on a weekend.”

Financial terms of the arrangement were not disclosed, but the deal, but it’s likely to give the financially ailing Postal Service a boost. The agency, which lost $16 billion last year, had tried but failed to end Saturday mail delivery as a cost-saving measure.

Shares of Amazon.com Inc. climbed $1.69 to $52 in morning trading.

(AP) – A endowment for memorial scholarship at Ozarks Technical Community College has reached $10,000 in honor of a Missouri soldier who died in Afghanistan.

Dennis and Debbie Peters of Springfield pledged a $7,500 gift to endow the Special Agent Sgt. Joseph M. Peters Memorial Scholarship Monday during a Veterans Day ceremony at the college. The gift, along with earlier contributions, brings the total endowment to $10,000.

Sgt. Peters, an OTC graduate, died Oct. 6 in Afghanistan. The scholarship will go to eligible veterans attending the community college in Springfield.

Peters was posthumously awarded the Combat Action Badge, Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart.

Dennis Peters is the community college’s Veterans Student Services representative.

(AP) — Congressman Kevin Yoder is a new father.

The northeast Kansas representative announced on his website that his wife, Brooke, delivered the child Thursday at Shawnee Mission Medical Center in Merriam. The girl, named Caroline Lucille Yoder, measured 20 inches and weighed 6 pounds, 1 ounce.

Yoder says mother and baby are healthy and resting at home. He described the baby as a “true blessing” and said he and his wife “couldn’t be happier” to add Caroline to their family.

(AP) Charges are expected soon against a woman accused of stealing a Missouri State Highway Patrol car and ramming it into two sheriff’s department cars.

(AP) — The University of Missouri plans to buy into a world-class observatory in Arizona, with a goal of doing research it currently isn’t able to perform.

The university will buy into the WIYN Observatory, which includes a 3.5-meter telescope atop Kitt Peak National Observatory in southern Arizona.

Eric Hooper, interim directory of the WIYN Observatory, says the mirror within the Arizona telescope is 75 times larger than the area in a telescope on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia.

Missouri will buy into the observatory at a 5 percent level, meaning it will have 15 dedicated nights of research on the Arizona telescope.  The annual payment will be $130,000, with $50,000 from the physics and astronomy department and $80,000 from the university provost’s office.

(AP) The Missouri State Highway Patrol says a 72-year-old man died when a tractor he was driving on an embankment overturned.

The patrol says Lincoln E. Stone of Rogersville was mowing about a mile northeast of Fordland Sunday when his tractor overturned, ejecting him.

The accident happened sometime between noon and 5 p.m. Sunday, when Stone was found. He was dead at the scene.

(AP) A new study says the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge produced about $3.5 million in economic benefits in 2011 for northwest Missouri.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the refuge provides economic benefits from retail sales, taxes and job income, along with visitor spending on recreation activities at the refuge near Mound City.
The refuge provides habitat for bald eagles, snow geese and ducks among other species.

Squaw Creek was among 92 of the nation’s 550 national wildlife refuges in the study, which examined spending in areas within 50 miles of each refuge.
The study says total spending for 2011 for Squaw Creek amounted to $2.6 million. Employment income registered $1 million and tax revenue was $411,000.