This NYT commentary talks about how the populations in many parts of rural Nebraska are lower than they were in 1920. People in the northern part of the Great Plains (hello Saskatchewan, Manitoba!) might well find some stuff in here that will resonate with them.

Some excerpts from the piece by screenwriter and author Richard Dooling:

Outside of Omaha and the fishhook, large parts of Nebraska are arguably in trouble. The dismal statistic that trends lower, year after year, for many of these struggling counties, is population.

Farms double in size with a regularity that rivals the seasons, while, almost in tandem, the number of farming families falls by half. The costs for schools, roads and police and fire departments remain relatively constant, but the bodies paying taxes, buying goods and developing land keep disappearing. County officials call it rural flight, brain drain or even mass migration, but despite the alarums, nobody has found a way to stop the excursions.

States like Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Wisconsin have tried to fight the trend by restricting the corporate consolidation of farms: Keep the farmers on their land by stopping vast corporations from buying 10 farms and consolidating them into one, which is basically what keeps happening. ...

Doug German, executive director of Legal Aid of Nebraska, who lives in the central part of the state, just off the fishhook, in Eustis (pop. 425), and provides legal services to the casualties of the state's poorer counties, agrees that rural Nebraska is at a "tipping point." The antidote to its economic depopulation, he believes, does not lie in bringing Intel or Toyota factories to the heartland, but in Nebraskans resolutely blooming where they are planted and developing micro industries capable of flourishing anywhere, with the help of computer and Internet technologies.

I hope Mr. German is right, but I wonder what kind of micro industry will save the likes of Arthur County (half the size of Rhode Island), where the population peaked at 1,412 in 1920, was 442 in 2000, and 402 in 2004? In these parts, during election season, the signs along the road say "Vote for Helen, County Assessor," because there's only one Helen, and she's running unopposed.

Instead of micro industries, a cynical futurist might see mega-farms, owned by global corporations, and farmed by armies of robot combines, controlled by global positioning satellite technology from offices in Omaha.

The population of North Dakota (South Dakota is immediately north of Nebraska, North Dakota is just south of Manitoba and Saskatchewan) peaked in the 1920s or 1930s too.

In Canada, you can directly tie the decline in rural populations to the mechanization of agriculture after the Second World War. With the advent of engine-powered tractors and combines, one person could farm much more acreage

To make a living, however, one had to boost their production and acreage. According to research I did for a major 1999 series on the farm crisis, the real price of wheat has been in decline for 130 years. In the 20th century, there were three major price spikes for wheat: The two world wars and the "great grain robbery" of the 1970s. Other than that, prices were relatively flat. Once you adjusted for inflation, they were in chronic decline.

The only way to survive was to stay really small and farm as a hobby, or to get really big and take advantage of economies of scale, the experts told me. The middle-sized farmers were the ones getting slowly choked by the relentless cost-price squeeze -- a squeeze that turned into a death grip whenever prices turned down.

If you weren't a smart, forward-looking farmer, economic life was going to be very cruel to you.

In early 2000, I was driving with one farmer south of Humboldt. They called it "sure-crop country:" Far enough north for decent moisture, far enough south to avoid early killing frosts, and deep, rich, productive soil.

And there were potash mines nearby that could provide excellent off-farm income for those lucky enough to get a job in one.

"Look around, Bill, this country's been cleaned out!" this guy exclaimed to me, pointing out all the quarter-sections that used to house farm families but now sat abandoned.

As we got to his farm, I noticed all the signs of deferred expenses. Every major piece of equipment was up on blocks; he didn't have the money for parts. His quonset hut was falling apart. His house was heated with wood to cut down on costs. He used a horse team around the yard.

In terms of furnishings and lifestyle, I'd put him and his family as lower working class.

While I was there, a grain elevator phoned the guy to remind him that he still owed $7,000 on last year's fertilizer bill.

Over a cup of coffee in his kitchen with some farmer buddy sitting in, I asked them when was the last time they made good money farming. They looked at each other, shrugged, and said either the late 1970s or the early 1980s.

"So you guys have been slowly going broke for almost 20 years?!" I wanted to scream. "Why are you still here?"

It's a lifestyle and heritage thing, mainly. Lots of people like farming and they love rural life. Toronto and similar places are poison to them.

But if you can't make a living, you can't make a living.

Canadian farmers point to the extremely generous subsidies paid out by the European Union and the United States as pushing down prices and hurting their incomes, and there's something to that.

However, I've driven through most of great plains states, particularly eastern Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, and the rural depopulation trend is arguably worse down there than it is in the hardcore prairie parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

In some ways, nature is pushing people off. The soil might be rich, but the climate is harsh and dry (and with global warming destroying the glaciers that feed the major rivers that flow eastward over Canada's and the U.S.'s prairies, chances are things will get even dryer). Biologically, the great plains were never meant to support people in large numbers. Keeping a farm going there is a Sisyphean task.

To my mind, that explains why those areas tend to support conservative political parties. If you don't have a hardened, self-reliant, free-enterprise attitude, you're not going to survive.

I don't know if I hold much hope that micro-industries will save the dying counties of rural Nebraska or their Canadian equivalents. In many cases, there were too many towns to begin with; the towns were established about 14 miles because you could only haul grain about seven miles by horse-drawn wagon. Big trucks, better roads and the huge, super-efficient concrete terminals that started springing up in the 1990s were all among the final nails in the coffin for the smallest, most vulnerable towns.

If you weren't born in those towns, chances are you aren't going to move there. In most of those areas, being in your 50s makes you a youngster. The only thing keeping the population up is that people are taking longer to die than they did a generation or two ago.

There are some small hospitals in rural Saskatchewan that have gone years between delivering babies.

One story that made me laugh was the town of Meacham, about 30 miles from Saskatoon. Artists and other creative types discovered it had cheap housing, so they started moving out there. And did the long-time residents appreciate the influx of new blood? "They don't curl!" one of them snivelled.

I'm actually sorry to see those rural communities disappear. It must be especially painful for those seniors who spent their whole lives building their communities only to spend their last years watching them decay and be absorbed again by the prairie.

When you see the collapsing ball diamonds, sagging arenas and fading signs marking this as the home town of some long-retired NHLer or curling champion, it's sad.

But given the giant forces of demographics, technology, geography, climate and economics at work here, I don't see the situation ever really turning around -- although I wish all the luck in the world to those looking for solutions.

Afterward

I moved to Regina in the summer of 1988 to start work as a reporter for the Regina Leader-Post. In early September that year, I decided to drive down to the Cypress Hills, about four hours to the southwest.

In between the towns of Shaunavon and Eastend in the province's far southwest is the village of Robsart.

This particular day was sweltering hot ('88 was a drought year), and I thought a popsicle was in order.

As I pull into this village, there's a huge banner welcoming me to Robsart Homecoming Weekend!

Except there's no one on the street.

No one.

It felt eerie.

Anyway, there was a little convenience store where I got my popsicle (an orange one, if I remember correctly).

Going back to my vehicle, I finally noticed where everyone was gathering: The graveyard.

Homecoming weekend in Robsart means communing with the dead.

In the 2001 Census, the population of Robsart was put at 15.