Roundup: September 19, 2025
A regular feature of our growing online journal, The Rural Review, these roundup posts collect notable recent research, analysis, and related rural news and commentary. Feel free to send suggestions for future collections to us here. And, more details on other opportunities to contribute to The Rural Review can be found here.
Recent Publications
In Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Cattle Sector: Land-Use Regulation as an Alternative to Emissions Pricing, published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Maxence Gérard, Stéphane De Cara, and Guy Meunier (all Paris-Saclay Applied Economics, France) examine the effectiveness of subsidizing cattle farmers to set land aside for ecosystem regeneration compared to alternative policies.
Ellie A. Schiappa, Elizabeth E. Perry, Maria Claudia Lopez (all Community Sustainability, Michigan State University), and Emily J. Silver (Forestry, Michigan State University) published “There’s More Negatives than Positives”: Community Perceptions About Climate Changes to Water Ecosystem Services in Southeast Michigan in Society & Natural Resources. The article uses a water ecosystem services framework to contextualize individual climate action plans.
Socius published Rural Populism and Tolerance for Political Violence by Jesse C. Bryant (Environment, Yale University), J. Tom Mueller (Population Health, University of Kansas Medical Center), and Paul Berne Burow (Earth System Science, Stanford University), which reveals an “unexpected” reduction in tolerance for political violence in rural areas of the US.
News & Commentary
Citing recent FBI data, Axios reported on Arkansas’s notably high violent crime rates in 2024. The article notes that a focus on urban crime often obscures the fact that rural states—such as Alaska and New Mexico—have the highest incidence of violent crime in the nation.
News Advocate published a story on how the area’s housing crunch is hampering recruitment and retention in Manistee County, Michigan, with particular consequences for the region’s hospital network. Salaries for many health care roles, such as nursing assistants, don’t cover the area’s high rents.
An article in The Guardian provided an update on the sudden closure of newspapers run by News Media Corporation. Seven local Wyoming newspapers and one in Nebraska were purchased by a group of Wyoming news executives and four South Dakota papers were bought in a separate transaction.
Reuters reported on Arizona’s proposal to lower training requirements for criminal defenders and prosecutors to encourage lawyers to work in the state’s rural areas by reducing the cost of their legal education. Instead of the traditional three years, the program would require only one year of law school.
Events & Recordings
The Maine Law Review is now accepting article proposals for their upcoming Spring 2026 issue, Rural Perspectives in Law: Challenges and Opportunities. The issue will explore the challenges and opportunities rural communities across the nation face and how the law and policy can better serve rural America. Abstracts are due by October 1, 2025. For more information, see here.
As part of our Rural Identity series, we’re excited to host Hannah Haksgaard, professor at the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law, at the University of Nebraska College of Law on October 9, 2025. Professor Haksgaard will discuss her new book, The Rural Lawyer: How to Incentivize Rural Law Practice and Help Small Communities Thrive (Cambridge University Press, 2025), at this free, in-person event. Details here.
Michigan State University’s Master Citizen Planner Series upcoming webinar will focus on “non-urban planning” to consider how non-metro areas require different approaches when making land use decisions. The session will explore rural considerations including housing, transportation, and natural resources. For more information and to register for the October 16, 2025 webinar, see here.
