In the city of Des Moines, there is Center Street. It runs throughout the city, but according to Little Village Magazine, it was one of the few neighborhoods open to Black residents for much of the 20th century. While Iowa never had Jim Crow laws, there were neighborhoods where realtors would not sell to Black families, and landlords would not rent to them. They were able to build their own community with their own drug store, bakeries, cleaners, restaurants, and much more to make their own “city within a city.” It was also home to clubs that featured Iowa’s best jazz and blues musicians and the first cosmetology school in Iowa.

If you have visited Des Moines, you probably never knew about this community. If you tried to visit it today, it no longer exists. When the National Interstate and Defense Act of 1956 happened, I-235 was built. It went through this neighborhood and destroyed this community.

While not the exact same situation, rural Iowa is also going through this struggle. In the instance of Center Street, its location and people were exploited like rural Iowa is being exploited by the extraction of resources. This is happening in rural Iowa where towns with strong Czech ancestry like Traer and Clutier have seen their communities dwindle with eye doctor offices, dentist offices, and schools closing shop and the “free market” picked winners and losers.

When more farmers farmed and owned the land around the communities and there were more small businesses that were supported by the plethora of farmers, the wealth stayed in the community. As agriculture centralized into more corn and soybean production, CAFOs, smaller farmers and business owners closed up shop. This left wealth in fewer hands outside of each community. This centralization also makes the startup costs for a farmer even harder leaving less wealth-building opportunities in rural Iowa.

It used to be different. After looking on an Iowa State website to look at old aerial photos, my grandparents’ and parents’ farms 60 years ago look vastly different than today. In one quarter section, there were four fields where there is one today. These different fields presented opportunities. While time traveling to the past, my grandparents will be jealous of the autonomous tractors and combine sizes and they would like the markets for corn and soybean but with less risk, comes more centralization.

This leads to smaller and less significant communities. Drive Tama County roads with someone who has been around the block a few times, and they can tell you who lived at each homestead or what used to be a homestead with a few rundown buildings, just as someone could do the same who was from the Center Street community. While the Center Street community can never come back, there still is time to turn around rural communities. There needs to be a change in how the state is run to give opportunities to families to create their own wealth by farming in diverse ways or create opportunities for rural Iowa to succeed which will lead to a more sustainable future for the Hawkeye State.

Sean Dengler is a writer, comedian, farmer, and host of the Pandaring Talk podcast who grew up on a farm between Traer and Dysart. You can reach him at sean.h.dengler@gmail.com.