This is a part of a bigger social problem out here where I live. The rural areas are becoming "youth deserts" for lack of a better term. If you are young and smart, you go to college and never come back. If you are young and not as smart, you get into scouting and/or FFA. Then you find out that there is a whole big world out there and you are not tied to the land that you grew up on. So these kids save and leave. What you are left with are the kids who are not motivated enough to better themselves and the kids who just give up. Kids are not stupid despite what they do and how they act (as the old guy I can say this!). They see farmers not making money, they see rural factory jobs leave and close and then get into a mindset that the future is bleak and passing them by. Why go into farming if mom and dad are struggling to pay the bills and keep the farm running?

Where my friends live, they (30's) are 1/2 the age of all of their neighbors; seeing someone their own age in the area is a rarity. They have to go to the nearest city (10,000 people and 30 minutes away) to hang out with non-retirement age people.

Want to know why the rural areas are so conservative? This is the same root cause. No new blood comes in with new ideas and fresh energy, so everything withers and fades. Then, the past starts to look better and better and if we just go back to the way things were all these issues will magically solve themselves. Yes, people out here think along these lines. This also points to why many rural farmers allow fracking companies to basically poison the aquifers they need for their farms. Any way to get more income is seen as a good thing. It is also why there is a backlash against organics out this way as it is seen by more than a few of the farmers as an attack on the way they care for their animals and land by people in "the Big City" who don't know what it is like out where the work is being done. (And to a point, they are sort of correct.) Kentucky literally bribes doctors to go work in rural areas with loan repayments and one of the reasons our Obamacare roll-out was so well done was to get more money flowing into rural health care as a sort of economic stimulus and at least try to lessen the massive health crisis outside of the big urban areas here. Hemp farming is not something the state started to do to make weed legal; it was started to try to jump ahead of the curve and inject some new blood into the rural farm belt here as well. Links to the program here

Rural America is in a ton of trouble, and when, not if, it collapses we are going to be in a large bit of pain.