A friend of mine sent me this article today. Fraser Hart is an interesting old guy; he's 90 years old and is finally retiring as geography professor from the U of Minnesota. Rural geography (mostly related to agriculture) has been his study area for 60+ years (he's seen a lot of changes over that time). Hart is also a big ag guy (if not a cheerleader of it, at least believing it was eventual). Although there are obvious differences in types of rural land uses across the US and Canada, a person could swap out MN for many other states or provinces; big metro areas keep growing and rural population shrinks, although the rural land use (farming, forestry, ranching, mining) may continue almost unabated. Nothing overly new here, more of a confirmation that its happening...
http://www.cura.umn.edu/sites/cura.adva ... ndberg.pdf