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The layoffs at Deere & Co.’s Ottumwa Works will hit that community hard, and rank as one of the larger blows to the Iowa economy during the downturn.

The Ottumwa plant manufactures balers and other implements used to produce hay or maintain pastures, and one observer was quoted as saying the conversion of pasture land to row crop production has affected the market for such machinery.

Maybe, although that seems like a tenuous link. The real story here is that makers of farm and construction equipment are suffering across the full range of their products.

Deere also laid off 160 employees this spring at its Ankeny plant, where it produces cotton harvesters. In March, the company laid off 325 people in the construction and forestry division.

Like so many private investors, Deere has found that diversification doesn’t help much in the current circumstances.

The same pressures affect its rivals. A CNH Global NV factory in Burlington making forklifts and backhoes announced in May that it plans to lay off about 150 workers.

Caterpillar Inc., which builds ag machinery in addition to its much larger construction line, said in January that it will cut 20,000 jobs this year, after seeing its earnings plunge 32 percent in the final three months of 2008.

All of this news spotlights a couple of important factors in the new economy now shaping up. Putting stimulus spending into construction projects is an important step, more valuable and certainly more desirable than making direct bailout payments to companies. And a global recession will require a global recovery.

Caterpillar depends on infrastructure spending all over the world to prosper, and Deere’s agricultural sector counts on continued advancements in farming everywhere, fueled by good prices in healthy markets.

We need other countries to advance and do well so our manufacturers can do the same. It’s not us against them anymore. It’s all of us against a bad economy.