Connections: Highway Maintenance and Local Economy

Remember that PBS show Connections? James Burke would show the wild string of connections along a string of seemingly unrelated inventions, historical events, and characters. For instance, listed today on the latest incarnation of Burke's historical inquiry, the KnowledgeWeb Project, Burke shows the connection between Napoleon and the development of modern computers (Egypt, shawls, fashion craze, automated looms, punch cards, ENIAC).

Similar unexpected connections can be found in the quest for solutions to policy problems. KJAM reports today that federal funding for highway projects is falling while construction costs rise [their more vivid headline: "Highway Funds Dwindle While Construction Costs Skyrocket," KJAMRadio.com, 2007.10.25]. Good thing we got Highway 34 east of town resurfaced this summer -- who knows when we'll get a good dip out of the funding well again.

It's hard to make more highway funds appear out of thin air -- the economy and our Congresspeople need to make that happen. We can try to make the highways last longe,r but how do we do that? The Madville Times tries to go easy on the highways by bicycling as often as possible, but our friends commuting to Sioux Falls can't make that trip on two wheels every day.

So maybe we should rely on local economy. We just got our copy of the South Dakota Local Foods Directory from Dakota Rural Action yesterday, and that got me thinking: if we encouraged more small farmers to grow more diverse crops for local sale and consumption, we wouldn't need to truck vast quantities of raw corn and beans off to faraway processors and then re-import that food in processed form to our grocery stores. That would mean fewer big semis thundering in and out of town, less wear and tear on the roads, and less highway expenses. Ah, connections!

Locally grown food: good for you, good for the roads.