Central Iowa’s Dallas County is growing rapidly as the Des Moines metropolitan area spreads westward, says Harvest Public Media in a look at life in two midwestern counties where rural is meeting urban. In recent decades, 11 percent of the land in Dallas County has been annexed by cities. Lots of people are unhappy about this, says county planner Murray McConnell. “Everybody wants to freeze the landscape as it was when they arrived.”
Still, growth has been a boon for new farmers Lori and Matthew Wiese, who direct-market fruits, vegetables, eggs, and chickens from their farm on a gravel road in Dallas County. Their customers come mainly from Des Moines and its suburbs. At the same time, the growing population strains county services. The county seat of Adel, for example, had to add a wing to its elementary school. Although the county tries to discourage development on prime farmland, once a town extends its boundaries, houses and stores are likely to appear on the annexed land.
Another place where urban is spreading into rural is the northern suburbs of Kansas City, less than a three-hour drive from Dallas County, says Harvest Media. There, since 2000, some 40,000 people have moved into Clay County, Missouri. “New housing subdivisions are pushing out livestock grazing and farmland; between 1978 and 2012, the number of cattle here dropped by a quarter.”
From an economic standpoint, development means more jobs and more businesses. But Linda Hezel, who runs a 15-acre farm that grows fruit, vegetables, herbs, and wildflowers, worries about the loss of open space as farmland is turned into subdivisions. State legislator T.J. Berry has another concern. “The thing I hear the most is the loss of local identities,” he says.