With acres and acres of land, and with so few people to fill them, Patchwork Nation’s Tractor Country communities are places where the cow or hog population may well outstrip the number of humans and where fences outline the borders of large plots of land. There are a large number of counties in Tractor Country — 484 — but only about six million people.

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It might be tempting to picture Tractor County as a 21st century American Gothic, but these places have a surprisingly cosmopolitan outlook thanks to their role in the global economy. Commodity prices are a critical issue and that increasingly leads to a focus on everything from international markets to bioengineering to energy policy.

In the last few years, as the ethanol debate has grown, Tractor Country has been caught in the middle. Corn farmers have been celebrating the rising per-bushel value on their crop, but beef and hog farmers have been bemoaning the rising cost of their feed. A variety of global and national issues affect commodity prices (and Tractor Country residents’ livelihoods) — ethanol and bioengineering policy and transportation costs, to name a few — so, the people here stay attuned to these issues.

These are not places where people are fighting for jobs or where this year’s economic stresses are driving the discussion. The median household income in Tractor Country sits beneath the U.S. average, but life is less expensive, and unemployment is exceedingly low — a point and a half under the U.S. figure. Poverty rates are below the national average as well.

These communities are also becoming a new front in the nation’s immigration wars, with growing Hispanic populations, but Tractor Country is still overwhelmingly white, more than 95 percent white, and race is not a big issue here. Many in these communities see race, or at least black Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, through the prism of something we call “The Huxtable Effect” —

The Huxtable Effect: In communities where there are fewer African-Americans, survey’s indicate fewer tensions between blacks and whites. Without regular contact with African Americans, predominantly white communities are left to things like pop culture types to define their images. And Obama, a successful, wealthy lawyer, looks more like Heathcliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby’s uber-father from the 1980’s Cosby Show) than the stereotypical African Americans in the media that carry negative connotations.

It’s clear that life here isn’t just about The Farm. These are places with strong conservative values, making it GOP territory. President Bush earned 62 percent of the vote in 2004, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain is expected to win here again. But because of its sparse population, Tractor Country has limited clout on Election Day — the states’ fates will rest with more populous Patchwork Nation communities.

— Dante Chinni

Read more about the Patchwork Nation communities at The Takeaway’s election Web site, vote2008.thetakeaway.org »