An indispensible fixture of any good farming community, the rural veterinarian is ready to treat a cow in labor, injured horse, or woeful hound dog at a moment’s notice. At least that's the image I had growing up watching ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ on PBS. Whatever your feelings on the work of James Herriot may be (or public television for that matter), his novels defined the popular romantic view of rural veterinarians. Unfortunately, and also of concern to herdsmen and other rural animal lovers, these  lauded professionals are in short supply and dwindling fast.
 

Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, announced last Friday that the USDA is rolling out a new program to help combat the shortage. The plan, in short: bribe recent veterinary school graduates with staggering debt loads (typically between $130,000 and $140,000) into rural areas by offering student loan repayment of up to $25,000 a year. I may have this wrong, but a ‘shortage’ would seem to imply that there’s an abundance of demand that’s not being met, which would also seem to imply that there’s money to be made. So why is it so hard to convince veterinarians to live the bucolic dream?

A number of factors contribute to these shortage of rural veterinarians. Yes, money plays a large role. Recent graduates lack the finances to set up their own practice, and so seek to work with an established practice while they pay down their school debt. Sure, there’s also a lot of money to be made in catering to house pets, prescribing Prozac to neurotic teacup poodles and the like, but aren’t there veterinary students out there who were brought up on James Herriot like I was? Who would find treating powerful beasts of burden more attractive than dogs designed to ride your Coach purse?

"In a really small area, it's difficult to make a practice work," said Dr. Donna Anagarano, associate dean for academic affairs at Auburn University School of Veterinary Medicine. "Vets want to have outside interests, and many of them are married to other professionals. You want your spouse to be able to find a job, too. Small communities also often don't offer enough support to pay down that debt and make the practice feasible."

David Hardin, a veterinary authority at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, provides a thought provoking insight into the situation. "As the rural population declines, there's a smaller pool of people that are interested in veterinary medicine to draw from." Could it be that simple? Fewer veterinary students coming from rural areas mean fewer vets who will return to rural areas.

The implications of this shortage for our food system and food safety are significant. Fewer large animal rural vets, who have to travel longer distances, lead to higher veterinary costs. As a result, herdsmen are relying more on their own knowledge to treat animals or simply forgo preventative treatments. This can lead to a larger numbers of sick animals entering our food system, which ultimately ends up on your plate.

The concern over livestock health is large enough that it leads the government’s justification for the dept. repayment scheme. "USDA can help ensure there is a first line of defense against animal diseases across the United States by placing qualified veterinarians in areas where there is a critical need," Vilsack said. "This program will help reduce veterinary shortages, especially in the area of food animal medicine, which will reduce stress on producers and improve the health of the livestock industry."

I can’t help but wonder about other ‘endangered professions’ in our rural communities. Consolidation of farming activities has undoubtedly contributed to the lack of rural veterinarians, which leads me to think of feed stores, equipment repair shops, mobile slaughter, seed cleaning, and a hundred other niche professions that have dwindled alongside the family farm.

Which is all just a reiteration of the fact that with economic development, “you can’t do one thing.” Tweak one valve on the economic machine and there are bound to be multiple and largely unpredictable implications somewhere else. To end on a positive note, the same goes for positive effects as the negative implications I’ve been discussing. A change in one person’s spending patterns that diverts even 10% of their spending to local, independently owned businesses has an impact (three times the impact those dollars were having at non-local businesses). A group of 40 or so community members who join a CSA create a livelihood for a young farm couple. Our actions in rural communities have a much larger proportional impact on our communities than our urban cousins, and we should leverage this opportunity to its greatest extent.

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