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A Small Idaho Town Bucks the Perception of Rural Struggle

Lost jobs, empty storefronts and shrinking populations. It’s an image of rural America ingrained in many people’s minds, and one that was often reinforced in the election.

The reality is far more complex and can be seen — and smelled, in the still-fresh paint — inside a Clif Bar factory that opened here last summer in south-central Idaho. The largest yogurt plant in the world is here, too, opened in 2013 by Chobani, the Greek yogurt giant, in a vast space of whirring robots, steel tanks and 1,000 full-time employees.

New manufacturing jobs and population growth have bolstered southern Idaho, bucking the pattern, and the perception, of rural struggle. But the surge only underscores the deeply uneven world of what economists call non-metro America, where the recession never ended in some places and is barely remembered in others.

By KIRK JOHNSON

Full Story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/us/a-small-idaho-town-bucks-the-perception-of-rural-struggle.html?_r=0

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