By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

MUNCIE, Ind. — When legislators drew county lines in this part of the nation more than 200 years ago, their goal was simple: Don’t put the boundaries beyond a horse-and-buggy’s one-day travel from the county seat.

Compare to a county map of Arizona, voted a state in 1912 after considerable advances in transportation and communication:

Though it is nearly three times the land area, with roughly the same population, it has only 15 counties to Indiana’s 92.
Economist Mark Drabenstott pointed out now, what used to be a city or county economy has ballooned to include global competition.

“The race used to be between Anderson (Ind.) and Detroit,” he said of luring an auto plant into one’s town in the past 50 years. “Now, the race is between Anderson and the inner provinces of China.”

A decline in manufacturing jobs should matter to Indiana farmers. David Terrell, executive director of the state Office of Community and Rural Affairs, reports out of 59,000 family farms, fewer than 2,500 of those owners can claim “full-time farmer” as their sole occupation.

“We all believe that in this place is a brighter economic future,” said Drabenstott, who grew up in Markle, Ind. “But we will not get there the way we did in the 20th century.”

Hunting vs. gardening
One way to get there is to keep talking about ideas for improvement, such as at the “Agriculture in the 21st Century” conference held in Muncie April 5, where Drabenstott was the keynote speaker.

“We hear, ‘Talk is cheap,’” said Sam Cordes, co-director for Purdue University’s Center for Regional Development. “I reject that. Talk is very, very valuable.”

Drabenstott agreed, with practical examples of other conferences he attended wherein two people met who hadn’t previously known their businesses could serve one another. Making such connections over time, he said, is “gardening” – planting seeds and cultivating them for the opportune moment.

This is not how Indiana has been doing business. He described the state’s – and its counties’ – method so far as “buffalo-hunting,” or going after factories by offering the cheapest cost of doing business.

“Do you really want to be known as the cheapest place on the planet to produce something?” Drabenstott asked.

Financial gardening also means investing in local education and encouraging entrepreneurs from an early age. He told the story of Newton, Iowa, whose leaders worried about losing Maytag jobs when the company was bought out by Whirlpool.

The irony is that founder F.L. Maytag started his company in Newton while working as an implement salesman. According to the Des Moines Register, he then spent large sums on the local economy, donating a park, theater and hotel and selling homes on easy terms to his workers.

“You have to grow more Floyd Maytags,” Drabenstott told farmers and government officials.

Cordes added that nearly 30 percent of Indiana’s current high school freshmen won’t graduate high school. (This is supported by data from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.)

He said this in itself is a lifetime economic handicap. Drabenstott added it’s something, however, that can be overcome if rural culture will encourage education and risk-taking for more students.

“You need a very large garden out of which lots of seeds sprout,” he said. “You’ll get a few mighty oaks; those are your Floyd Maytags. But there are other things you’ll get, too.

“If you cannot rise above these county lines from the 17th century, we’ve got a problem.”

One attendee, a federal government employee who travels across state lines to seek opportunities for economic growth, nodded.

“We’ve got a problem,” he agreed, wishing not to be identified.
Officials in some rural counties have told him they can’t cooperate with another county on an economic project because of longstanding high-school football rivalries. He observed wryly that it seems they would rather forego a “win-win” situation for a “win-lose” or even a “lose-lose.

“And,” he added, “I’ve been told until I understand that (mindset), I’ll never understand rural (areas).”