Planting 10s of thousands of acres of pasture, row crop, and hay land in pines does a lot for you if you own a timber/land acquisition company. First off the kids who grew up in that small town will start looking for city jobs because you can’t make a living farming or running cattle on that land. If they do stay there they will either work in the timber industry or get real creative. After a while the saw mill becomes the main economic incubator of that community. Everyone will start saying farming/ranching was a thing folks did before the 80’s etc.. That’s when you decide to be a dumbass like me or move to where the money “is.” Before NAFTA a lot of the cotton grown around here went to VH and the t shirt/textile mills that women like my grandmother worked in. The big money has always been tied to government. They want everything concentrated, independence ain’t worth a damn if you want folks to stack lumber all day. Just what I’ve seen, I was 2yo when NAFTA passed