OPINION | Farmers, 1099ers and multiplier effects
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Dave Jensen is a small town entrepreneur who sees first hand what economists call the “multiplier effect.” Strong farm incomes are carrying the rural Minnesota economy right now as farm families make home improvements and buy equipment and other farm and household products and services.That has led to nine major remodeling jobs this fall for Jensen and his woodworking employees at Valley Woods in Wendell.“It’s the multiplier,” he said at a recent dinner gathering in a reopened restaurant in Elbow Lake. “Agriculture is driving it.”But that’s not all that is apparent as rural Minnesota flirts with an economic rebound. A new rural economic structure is emerging that will outlast the up and down cycles of the agricultural related economy.People finding work these days are likely to be independent contractors, or “free lancers.” They work on projects without paid health care benefits or retirement plans. These are “self-employed” who use the 1099 tax forms, not employees who receive W-2 forms.Don Lottman, a carpenter in the Kerkhoven-Sunburg area, said skilled people can “find work” anywhere in the west-central Minnesota area right now. Most of it is ag related, he said, and most of it is for independent workers, or the “1099ers” as they are called, and not as full-time employees.This is known as the “1099 trend,” said Ben Winchester, a rural sociologist and demographer for the Minnesota Extension Service.Extension Service experts in Illinois and North Dakota have conferences planned this fall that will look at problems the 1099 trend may be causing families as well as opportunities it may be opening for prospective entrepreneurs. Continue Reading
Country coffee shop talk in southwest Minnesota has land prices soaring to around $10,000 an acre for prime farmland that will go on the market once the harvest is done.
On Farming
A couple weeks ago I wrote about the