Post-Crisis Resilience in Rural America: Targeting Infrastructure Investment in Volatile Counties

The rural U.S. economy in 2025 is navigating a perfect storm of volatility, driven by collapsing crop prices, policy uncertainty, and compounding climate risks. According to CoBank's 2025 Year Ahead Report, rural industries-particularly agriculture-are disproportionately exposed to federal policy shifts, including proposed import tariffs and immigration crackdowns that threaten labor-dependent sectors like dairy and meatpacking. Meanwhile, row crop prices have plummeted nearly 50% from 2022 highs, leaving farmers with decade-low profitability amid stubbornly high input costs for fertilizers, equipment, and fuel, as the St. Louis Fed reports. This crisis demands a strategic rethinking of infrastructure investment to stabilize vulnerable regions and catalyze long-term resilience.

Identifying the Most Vulnerable Regions

The USDA's 2025 County Typology Codes and the Appalachian Regional Commission's (ARC) FY 2025 designations offer critical frameworks for pinpointing at-risk areas. For instance, counties with "high farming concentration" (defined as 20%+ of earnings or 17%+ of jobs tied to agriculture) are particularly susceptible to price shocks and input cost spikes. Similarly, ARC's FY 2025 designations reveal 77 distressed counties in Appalachia-the lowest number in 19 years-yet these regions remain deeply entrenched in economic distress, with three-year average unemployment rates, poverty rates, and low per capita incomes compounding their fragility.

While the specific list of these 77 counties is not included here, ARC's interactive map and state-specific PDFs provide granular data for investors and policymakers. For example, counties in Georgia, Mississippi, and West Virginia-states with historically high agricultural dependence-stand out as priority zones for intervention. These areas often lack the administrative capacity to access federal programs like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), exacerbating their vulnerability, as shown in a rural capacity map from Headwaters Economics.

Infrastructure Priorities for Resilience

Targeted infrastructure investments in volatile rural regions must address both immediate survival needs and long-term adaptive capacity. Key opportunities include:

1. Broadband Expansion: Rural areas lag in connectivity, hindering access to markets, telehealth, and remote work. The Rural Capacity Map from Headwaters Economics identifies large swaths of the Midwest and West as "low-capacity" zones, where broadband gaps stifle economic diversification, a point reinforced by a GAO blog post.
2. Water and Sanitation Systems: Colonias-predominantly Hispanic communities near the U.S.-Mexico border-face dire infrastructure deficits, including inadequate water systems. Post-disaster recovery is further hampered by these gaps, as the 2022 DCI rankings show.
3. Climate-Resilient Transportation: Aging roads and bridges in Appalachia and the Midwest are increasingly vulnerable to climate-related disruptions. The Distressed Communities Index highlights these regions as high-priority for upgrades, given their elevated poverty rates and exposure to wildfires and flooding.

Overcoming Barriers to Investment

A critical challenge lies in rural communities' limited capacity to navigate federal funding processes. Many distressed counties lack staffing, technical expertise, and administrative infrastructure to apply for IIJA grants or ARC programs, a point underscored by a Brookings analysis. To address this, partnerships between federal agencies, nonprofits, and private investors could streamline application processes and provide on-the-ground support. For example, the Economic Innovation Group's DCI-a tool classifying communities by economic health-could guide targeted capacity-building efforts in the most distressed 10% of U.S. counties, aligned with ARC's distressed-designation system.

Conclusion: A Blueprint for Resilience

The path to post-crisis resilience in rural America hinges on precision: identifying the most vulnerable counties, aligning infrastructure investments with their unique needs, and addressing systemic capacity gaps. By leveraging tools like the USDA County Typology Codes and ARC classifications, stakeholders can move beyond broad generalizations and channel resources where they are needed most. As crop prices stabilize and policy uncertainties resolve, early investments in broadband, water systems, and climate-resilient infrastructure will position these regions to thrive-not just survive-in an era of persistent volatility.