.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} When it comes to turning back the clock, government has its limits. It can knock off one hour every fall to end daylight-saving time, but that’s about it. Rewinding four or five decades to re-create the golden age of Midwestern agriculture is beyond the power of mere mortal officeholders.

However, there is an effort under way to do … something.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack brought an entourage to Ankeny recently to create some dialogue between government officials and the world of agriculture. He’s staging similar events elsewhere around the nation, and it’s an admirable project. “The president is very concerned about the status of the rural economy,” Vilsack told a large crowd at Des Moines Area Community College’s Ankeny campus. “He wants a new framework.”

Building a new framework sounds doable. But what some rural folks really want is a ride in a time machine, and that’s probably not going to happen. At one session, a Missouri farmer named Jim Foster talked about driving up here from Missouri, and compared the sights now with what he saw in the 1960s. Back then, he said, every farm had some hogs in homemade shelters out in the pasture and a few dozen calves on feed, and the driveway hummed with visits from the local veterinarian, feed companies and implement dealers.

Now he sees weeds in the feedlots, collapsing buildings and “very little human activity around what was once a thriving economic model.”

No question, farms were more pleasing to drive past in the old days. The closer anyone gets to self-sufficiency, the more the rest of us like to watch. But there’s no gravel road back to that sunset-colored farmstead.

Other farmers on the panel with Foster talked about niche marketing and sideline businesses – compromises with the world as it is. Foster wasn’t impressed. Referring to selling pork at a farmers market, he said, “I applaud those doing it, but lots of luck getting a living for all of rural America that way.”

When good things go away, we look for malevolent forces to blame. But really, those self-sufficient farmers of the 1960s set us on the path to what we have now, and there’s nothing mysterious about it. They were independent, but independence is just another name for competition. Competition translates into winners and losers.

Most of those small operators harbored a desire to be a big operator. They rented more land and bought bigger equipment; they put the hogs indoors for greater efficiency. The game changed before they could call a timeout.

Foster argued that we’ve moved beyond competition into something that looks an awful lot like monopoly, at least in hog production. You’re free to raise all the livestock you want, but when it’s marketing time, you take what the big guys allow you to have.

It’s easy to feel sympathy for people like Foster, who just wants his grandchildren to have a reasonable chance to farm. “Size and deep pockets should have no bearing on their right to participate,” he said. “This is America.” But an awful lot of the young people who leave the farm are leaving because they don’t want to be there anymore, making Foster a rebel leader without enough rebellious followers.

Vilsack talked about making sure rural residents have good broadband access, promoting renewable energy and “reconnecting people with their food source.”

These would be great things. But they won’t be enough to make legions of young adults choose the farm over the bright lights. The Internet can help you track price trends, but it can’t make a hog confinement building look like fun.

It was delightful to see those bustling farms back in the day, and it’s sad to see so many of them crumbling into the dirt now.

But corporations will keep striving for maximum efficiency, and farmers will continue to be knocked off their tractors. That’s America, too.