Rural legislators dig in: as farming communities dry up, so does their influence in statehouses, pushing rural lawmakers to ask: 'What's more important than food?'.

• Author: Wolf, Mark
• Position: RURAL AMERICA

You have to leave the blacktop to get to Representative Jerry Sonnenberg's place. Visitors must turn off a pock-marked stretch of Colorado 61 near Sterling, a city of about 15,000 in the flatlands of northeast Colorado, then travel about a mile on two county roads. They'll pass at least one sign that warns the road is not plowed from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m., which can make the winter driving tedious at Representative best, treacherous at worst.

Sonnenberg's home, bought by his grandfather in 1937, has housed four generations, two of Colorado whom have sent a member to the Colorado General Assembly in Denver.

Just west of the house, a hulking green farm implement sits in a field, testament that the Sonnenbergs are firmly in the green (John Deere) equipment camp, as opposed to the red (Case-International Harvester). It is a distinction not taken lightly out here, where a reliable tractor is almost a member of the family.

Sonnenberg, a Republican, represents a 10,690-square-mile expanse so vast a crow would need steroids to traverse it. His district is bigger than nine states and about the size of Maryland. Sonnenberg farms and ranches about 4,500 acres and is the only member of the 65-seat House actively engaged in farming.

Four states to the east, Senator Richard Young (D) of Indiana also farms, but he's always had a second job to afford raising his family in the country. His parents' farm house has been renovated and converted into a vacation rental, where guests can feed the goats and gather chicken eggs. "It gives the kids a little bit of an opportunity to rebuild that relationship with the land," says Young.

A Loss of Clout

Young's district encompasses parts of six counties in the rolling hills of southern Indiana. It's nowhere near the size of Sonnenberg's, yet the challenges are similar, starting with rural America's diminished clout in legislatures. As farm communities shrink, many who represent them feel they must fight for a seat at the table in what they believe are urban-centric statehouses.

"City people don't understand the issues out here," says Sonnenberg, who cites gun rights, renewable energy mandates and water policy as examples where rural and urban interests collide. "There is such a lack of ties to agriculture today. Fifty years ago you might have had a grandfather or an uncle on the farm you could have related to, but now so many of our urban cousins don't even have that," he says.

Fifty years ago, rural areas also held considerably more sway in legislatures, a tradition going back to the country's founding, when districts were drawn to be similar in physical size, affording rural lawmakers outsized influence. But the Supreme Court changed that in the 1960s when it ruled legislative districts had to have roughly equal populations to ensure the principle of one person, one vote. In the most recent reapportionment in 2011, eastern Colorado's three sparsely populated House districts were consolidated into two, a pattern seen across rural America.

Where Have All the Farmers Gone?

The Census Bureau reports that, for the...