We'd Like To Mention

Drive through any small town in rural America, and you'll likely find a similar story: a shuttered clinic, a consolidated school, a Main Street holding on by its fingernails -- and a community that refuses to quit.

In the April 2026 special issue of Progressive Farmer, "Rural Resilience," we're pulling back the lens and widening our field of view to look beyond the fencerows and into those communities that farmers and ranchers both rely on and help sustain.

Agriculture doesn't exist in isolation. It depends on schools to educate the next generation, hospitals to keep its families healthy and Main Street businesses to supply goods and services for daily living.

Rural America is facing significant challenges -- and unprecedented opportunities. Health-care systems are confronting closures and workforce shortages, even as innovative partnerships point toward new models of care. Schools are navigating declining enrollment and tight budgets, yet continue to outperform expectations by sharing resources, embracing place-based learning and serving as the social backbone of their towns. Broadband expansion has accelerated dramatically since the pandemic, opening doors to telehealth, precision agriculture and remote work -- though access remains uneven.

This issue was especially meaningful for me as I worked with our team of writers and editors. My life, like many of our readers', is woven into the fabric of rural America. I attended kindergarten through 8th grade at a small school in a north-central Nebraska town of only about 60 people with the same eight to 10 classmates. My mom spent nearly 50 years as a grade-school teacher in rural communities. I saw firsthand how those schools served not only as places of learning but as anchors for their towns. Today's rural educators continue that tradition -- innovating, stretching resources and showing up for their students.

That same spirit of innovation and determination can be found in other aspects of rural life, as well. It shows up in a young Kansas entrepreneur who transformed a struggling lumberyard into a thriving rural business (see the magazine article "Investing in Rural Main Street," in Progressive Farmer's April 2026 issue on page 40 or at https://www.dtnpf.com/…). And, in Nebraska, college students who discover that rural health care offers not just hands-on training but meaningful careers (see the magazine article "The Rural Prescription," in Progressive Farmer's April 2026 issue on page 26 or at https://www.dtnpf.com/…).

The challenges currently facing rural America are real: aging populations, workforce shortages, policy uncertainty and infrastructure gaps. But, so is the capacity to respond -- to collaborate across county lines, innovate with limited resources and welcome new people and ideas while preserving local identity.

Rural resilience doesn't mean resisting change, it means harnessing it. Resilience, after all, is not about bouncing back to what was -- but about building what comes next.

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-- You may email Anthony at anthony.greder@dtn.com, or reach him on social platform X @AGrederDTN

-- Special Note from the Progressive Farmer Editor in Chief about the use of AI: Progressive Farmer is dedicated to telling the true stories of agriculture and the people who live them. We use artificial intelligence tools carefully and transparently -- only for clearly labeled illustrations and to support our editors' reporting. Our photographs are real, and every story is written and edited by our team in accordance with DTN and industry ethical standards. Your trust matters to us, and we work hard to maintain it every day. - Katie Dehlinger, Progressive Farmer Editor In Chief

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