Sundaze

Lori Sturdevant wrote a great column on Sunday.

There's a timelessness on Machinery Hill. The visitor notes the timelessness of the 4T Program message - Tractors, Transmissions, Tarnation, Tranquility - and the clusters of genuine young 'uns gathered around their mechanics projects. These are the "Family Mechanics" of the future - the people who'll run our family garages and farm equipment dealerships, carrying on this state's proud traditions...

Or perhaps this:

Standing around the 4R booth - the R's stand for Radio, Ratings, Rip and Read - one can see what 101 constant years of constant, generation-to-generation commitment (in terms of state subsidy) that the program has brought to the youth involved. The children - who will carry on Minnesota's "Family Radio" tradition - benefit - and so do we all...".

Of course, I'm lying. Ms. Sturdevant really wrote this:

There's a soothing timelessness inside the 4-H Building at the State Fair. The eye can rove from the 1930s group photos and 1958 ribbons in the display case to the clusters of real young people around beribboned exhibits, and admire what 101 years of constant commitment has produced.

The eye can be deceived. Courtesy of state budget cuts, change is coming to 4-H, and to its parent organization, the University of Minnesota Extension Service.

Sturdevant's column noted that funding cuts to the U of M Extension Service's "4H" program will spell the instant death of the family farm - or at least the Norman Rockwell-y image of the Family Farm that the DFL continues to flog.

She says:

County 4-H program coordinators -- along with the once-ubiquitous county extension agents -- will soon be gone.

And along, it should be added, with the tiny-town family farm life, which has been on the ropes for thirty years, and is pretty much a dead issue.

Time was that farm life in the Upper Midwest was centered around hundreds of small towns - each with a grain elevator and a rail spur, a grocery store, a church or two or three, about the same number of taverns, an extension/4H worker and a high school.

Today, the schools are consolidated, farmers think nothing of driving two hours to shop. The elevator is closed, the spur shut down years ago, the store and the taverns folded, the school consolidated with four others - in a bigger town 20 miles away - and the small towns are basically nursing homes with freeway exits.

There's a new structure coming: 18 regional offices with 18 regional extension educators, coordinating the work of volunteers and of as many paid county 4-H staff members as the state's 87 county boards of commissioners care to hire.

Where county elected officials are willing to raise and spend property tax dollars, 4-H will flourish. But in counties where 'no new taxes' is the rule, whither 4-H?

Whither the Young Ford Dealers? Whither Future Guitarists of American? Whither indeed the Editorial Columnist Kids club?

Whither indeed; nobody has decided that it's worth taxpayer dollars to create the next generation of car salesmen or musicians or journalists.

So - can 4H be saved? How important is the question?

Sturedevant found a patsy - a rural DFLer - to answer that:

State Rep. Al Juhnke, DFL-Willmar and a 4-H parent, spoke for the pessimists: 'Minnesota's 4-H programs are in trouble!' he warned, as he argued at a press conference for restoration of $850,000 lost to 4-H through state budget cuts this year. 'We are at risk of losing 4-H and all the good things it does for rural kids.'

But that's not the point. Why do rural kids rate a special subsidy? So we don't lose the seed art at the State Fair? Why?

Did voters in Jackson and Martin counties in 2002 understand that 'no new taxes' could mean a smaller 4-H program?

'I don't think so,' Harries said.

It should dawn on them before the next State Fair rolls around."

Or perhaps it will dawn on Lori Sturdevant; Rural Minnesota's kids will pay their "First-ever" membership fee, if 4H is important to them. If it's not...

...it'll go the way of Future Whalers of America.

Need a Kleenex?

Posted by Mitch at September 3, 2003 06:28 AM