Year: 2024

EXCERPT: “After seeing the economic pressures people were facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Small Towns – an organization connected to the University of Minnesota – Morris – began looking into what challenges their community faced when it came to food security. The team found that many people in Stevens County experienced food insecurity. ...

The USDA – ERS has released the new Rural-Urban Continuum Codes for each county. Kelly Asche, Senior Research April 2024 People love classifications—the ability to split things into separate, distinct groups makes them easier to measure, providing some clarity when creating policy. Although we agree that most classifications aren’t perfect, we also don’t give enough ...

EXCERPT: “While St. Cloud is looking to help people without homes find a permanent place to live, many businesses in greater Minnesota are having difficulty hiring employees because they can’t find adequate housing. But few developers are willing to build in areas with low population density. Kaomi Lee found one west central builder trying to help, ...

The recent Census of Agriculture shows that ag in rural Minnesota isn’t monolithic. Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher April 2024 A topic that is frequently discussed among rural residents, particularly in agricultural areas, is how much farming has changed over the last 50 years. The technology being used, the crops that now dominate the landscape, and ...

EXCERPT: “This summer’s most fashionable color will be orange. Again. The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) has 193 road and bridge construction projects on tap for this spring, summer and fall in pretty much every corner of the state: Edina, East Grand Forks, Duluth, Litchfield, Minneapolis, Monticello and lots of other spots. ‘Drivers throughout Minnesota can ...

EXCERPT: “Although Gov. Tim Walz and DFL legislative leaders agreed to spending targets last week that include $16 million for emergency medical services, many state lawmakers from Greater Minnesota continue to fight for much more to keep the system from collapsing. ‘There’s a crisis before us,’ says Rep. Dave Lislegard, DFL-Aurora, ‘and ambulance services that ...

Highest paying occupations drive the difference between the Twin Cities seven-county metro and the rest of Minnesota. Kelly Asche, Senior Researcher March 2024 As the search for workers intensifies throughout Minnesota, the conversation around wages and the gap between rural areas and the seven-county metro continues to come up. To try and add some nuance ...

EXCERPT: “For years, city dwellers have had access to an array of apps, such as Apple Maps and Google Maps, to plan their public transportation trips. These options are more readily available in urban areas because of how public transit in urban areas works: transit agencies run fixed routes, and their schedules change infrequently. Some ...

Marnie Werner Vice President of Research & Operations   My dad once told me his boss had a sign on his door that read: “Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?” When I first started at the Center in 2000, I think rural Minnesota was at a crossroads of sorts. The ...