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Rural life should not be forgotten
University Chronicle
EDITORIAL BOARD
The issue: State judges laid out Minnesota's new legislative boundaries Tuesday, creating another urban Senate district.
What we think: While the new urban district, formerly a rural one, means that a larger population of people has more representation, the rural areas should not be forgotten.
In a move that some citizens of rural areas may deem threatening, the state panel of judges created another urban Senate district by swallowing up a rural district.
As a part of the redistricting, which takes place every 10 years, the state is required to look at the population and reorganize boundary lines for congressional and legislative representation. Each of the 134 House districts must consist of about 36,000 people, while each of the 67 Senate districts should have about 72,500 people.
This makes sense in a democracy. The majority rule. The recent trend shows that cities are growing out and people from the rural areas are moving into them. This means that not only are the rural areas shrinking, but the voices of the people in the rural areas are becoming harder to hear.
Many owners of small family farms are witnessing the strangulation of their way of life. Even though agriculture is a leading industry in Minnesota, farmers are finding it harder and harder to survive on farming alone.
With less representation at the congressional and legislative levels, their battles become their own. Many quit, selling their multi-generational farmland to suburbanites, land developers and corporations. With the sale of farmland often goes an entire way of life. For many, this is the only way of life they have ever known.
For some of these farmers and rural people, they may partially understand what it is like for the people in different countries who are loosing their culture to globalization, commercialization and capitalism. The small farmers are also losing their way of life to these same things.
Fortunately, another leading industry in Minnesota is tourism. People flock to this state not only for the Mall of America, but also for Minnesota's lakes, its nature and its open, country living.
Rural communities need to preserve these assets and urban areas need to remember to help.
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