More often these days we are coming across web sites that tell a local story — really a local struggle taking place somewhere in Yonder. People still meet in church halls and local libraries. But they also build web sites. We saw two recently, one put up by residents living near the Southeastern Colorado Canyondlands who are trying to limit the expansion of a U.S. Army training site. The other was set up by those who live near a planned super-sized dairy in far northwestern Illinois.

Pinoncanyon.com was set up by those who oppose the expansion of an Army training facility into the Pinon Canyon area of Southeastern Colorado. The Army would like to add over 100,000 acres to its Pinion Canyon Maneuver Site. The Pinion Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition has put together a very slick site that both describes the fight and pictures the land in dispute. Good photographs and information (and paintings, like the one above). Check it out. 

In Nora, Illinois, residents are fighting a two large dairy farms planned by a California dairy operator. Each dairy would have 5,500 animals (cows and heifers). Their web site is stopthemegadairy.com.  This is conflict familiar to many people across the country, as farms turn into factories and communities struggle with the waste produced by "concentrated animal feeding operations" (CAFO). The web site reports that the Jo Daviess County Board will vote on this project shortly. The opposition group meets every Tuesday night at 6:30 pm at Hixster's, right above the BP station in downtown Warren.

When it comes time to complain about federal spending, why is it that projects in rural communities come in for the most ridicule?

President Obama's budget would phase out fixed annual payments to farmers who have more than half a million in annual sales, according to Philip Brasher in the Des Moines Register. "That threshold would catch commercial-scale farms across Iowa and other states, economists say," Brasher writes. "An estimated 81,000 farmers nationwide would lose their payments." USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack explains the cuts: "If you had a dollar - one dollar - where would you put it? Would you give it to a child for more nutritious eating? Would you give it in a direct payment to a high-income (farm) operation?"

FarmPolicy.com has an excellent rundown on the different reports on the ag budget. (The blog has an important reminder: subsidies aren't given according to total income derived by a farm operation. Subsidies are based on acres.) Cuts include eliminating cotton storage credits, funding for the Resource Conservation and Development program and reducing funding for brand promotion overseas. The Obama plan says that large farmers are in the position to replace payments with other subsidies for activities such as carbon sequestration and renewable energy production.

The Washington Times reports that "top" Rs and Ds are "already shooting down President Obama's plan to cut farm subsidies...." But the cuts are part of Obama's overall plans to raise money for a new health care plan. "The war has started," said Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. No kidding.

Susanne Stahl writing at DTN.com (a subscription news and weather service) has a very cool story about working and living together in rural Illinois. She tells the story of the sale of Kilton Farms, nearly 4,000 acres of farmland in Macoupin and Montgomery counties in Illinois. The farm was being auctioned in 43 parcels and local farmers who wanted to expand their operations realized they might have a hard time bidding against those who could combine parcels into larger tracts.

So some 15 farmers began talking and then they organized what was essentially a land-buying co-op. Each farmer got his own financing, but they bid together after agreeing on a price. "This was a nontraditional sale and new territory for everybody," one farmer said. "There were reservations about how it would affect each person individually. We talked scenarios and eventually came to an agreement that would be beneficial to everybody."

The co-op worked. At the end of the auction (photo above), the farmers had bought 2,462 acres. "This sale has brought the farming community together -- it gave a reason to work together for the same outcome: to keep the ground locally owned," another farmer told Stahl. "It was a total group effort -- one individual didn't make or break the thing -- everyone pitched in where they were needed."