Last week, I read a New York Times article about rural communities paying people to move there. Across the country, small towns and rural counties are experimenting with relocation incentives to attract new residents. Some offer thousands of dollars. Others offer land or help with housing. One community in Kansas even offered farm-fresh eggs for a year.
And yet, one of the biggest takeaways from the article was that the money isn't necessarily what makes people stay.
Kelly (Larson) Gourley, the economic development director in Lincoln County, Kansas, described the cash incentive as the "click bait." What happens after the click matters more.
I haven't stopped thinking about that, because rural communities aren't just competing for businesses anymore. They're competing for people: families, workers, entrepreneurs and even visitors who might someday become residents. And if that's true, I think we need to broaden the way we think about rural economic development.
Jobs matter. Housing matters. Infrastructure matters. But so does place.
What makes someone choose your community instead of another one? And once they arrive, what makes them want to stay?
Agriculture is part of the answer
I've spent the past several years working at the intersection of agriculture, tourism, marketing and economic development. The more time I spend in those spaces, the more convinced I become that we've historically thought about agriculture too narrowly.
Agriculture is usually treated as one industry. Tourism is another. Economic development is another. Community development is another. But people don't experience communities according to the organizational charts we've built around them.
They experience the farm stand they stop at every Saturday morning, the peach orchard where they take their kids every summer, the restaurant where the menu tells them which farm grew their tomatoes. They experience the farmers market where they run into their neighbors, the fall festival they invite their parents to when they come to town, the landscape they drive past on their way home and the food traditions that could only exist in that particular place.
Those things aren't just agricultural assets. They're quality-of-place assets.
And in a world where communities are increasingly competing for residents, I think that's an important distinction.
Getting someone there is different from getting them to belong
The New York Times article profiled several communities experimenting with relocation programs, with decidedly mixed results. Lincoln County Economic Development Foundation initially attracted five remote workers, but three eventually moved away. Other communities discovered that money couldn't overcome a lack of housing or well-paying jobs. One community generated interest from potential residents only to realize it didn't have enough rental housing for people who wanted to "try on" the community before buying a home.
That's the limitation of treating resident attraction primarily as a recruitment problem. You can buy awareness, create an incentive and generate a lead. But eventually someone has to decide whether they can actually see themselves living there.
That's an emotional question as much as an economic one.
It's why I found the farm-fresh eggs in Lincoln County's relocation package so interesting. The eggs aren't going to convince someone to move across the country. But they tell you something about the place you're moving to. They create a connection between a new resident and the agricultural community around them. In a small way, they help answer a much bigger question: What does living here actually feel like?
We talk a lot about business recruitment. Maybe we need to talk more about community discovery.
This is something I've been thinking about in agriculture for a while. People cannot support a farm they don't know exists. But the same principle applies to communities: people can't choose a place they've never discovered.
That makes the farms, food businesses, restaurants, markets, festivals, outdoor spaces and cultural traditions within a region part of its discovery infrastructure.
A farm might be the reason someone visits a rural community for the first time. A restaurant might bring them downtown afterward. A festival might bring them back six months later. Eventually, they start recognizing businesses and knowing people. The place becomes familiar, and familiarity can become attachment.
That doesn't mean agritourism is suddenly a population-growth strategy. It means the lines between tourism, agriculture, community development and economic development are much blurrier than we often acknowledge.
I've watched this happen in my own work
Here in South Carolina, I've had the opportunity to work on projects where agriculture isn't being treated as something happening separately from the rest of the regional economy. I've worked with tourism and economic development partners to tell the stories of farms and food businesses. I've worked with a rural electric cooperative to show how agriculture, conservation, energy and natural resources intersect.
More importantly, I've started to see what happens after those stories reach people.
I've watched a story about a local food producer lead to a relationship with a farm store that began carrying her product. I've heard from customers who visited a farm for the first time because they discovered it through a story online.
Those may look like small outcomes individually, but collectively they demonstrate something important: discovery changes behavior.
Someone learns a farm exists, so they visit. They spend money. They tell someone else. Maybe they discover another business nearby. Over time, they begin to understand what makes that community different from the one down the road.
That is agriculture contributing to economic development.
Rural communities already have assets they're not fully activating
This is where I think there's a tremendous opportunity for rural communities. The answer isn't necessarily to build something new. Sometimes it's to better understand, connect and activate what you already have.
Which farms can visitors experience? Which agricultural businesses have compelling stories but almost no public visibility? Where are restaurants already sourcing locally? Which food traditions are distinctive to your region? What agricultural events could become regional draws? Where could farms connect with downtown businesses? Which producers could supply hotels, restaurants or institutions?
There are broader questions, too. What landscapes contribute to the identity of the community? Where are tourism, agriculture and economic development already overlapping without anyone intentionally connecting them? And perhaps most importantly, can someone who doesn't already live there discover any of this?
That's not simply a marketing question.
It's an economic development question.
Agriculture can help communities compete on something other than money
A small rural county probably isn't going to outspend a major metro. It may not have the largest employers, newest apartments or longest list of amenities. But it has something a larger place cannot manufacture: its own sense of place.
Agriculture is often a significant part of that sense of place. The farms, the landscape, the food, the history, the people who have stewarded the land and the businesses transforming what is grown there into something people can eat, drink, experience and remember all contribute to what makes one community different from another.
Those aren't quaint extras to the "real" economy. They're part of what makes a community distinct.
And distinction matters when you're competing for people.
So maybe the question rural communities should be asking isn't simply, "How do we get people to move here?"
Maybe it's: What would make someone choose us?
What would make someone visit and then come back? What would make them spend money, tell a friend or feel connected to the community? And eventually, what would make them stay?
Cash might get the click. But the community has to deliver what comes next.
For rural America, I think agriculture deserves a much bigger role in creating it.