If anyone doubts whether the urban-rural divide exists, just ask the folks at the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. That district straddles the urban-rural divide, and it is real. Its western border is the Willamette River, which runs through the middle of Portland, Oregon’s largest city. To the east are farms and forests.

A person can watch a Portland Trail Blazers basketball game at the Moda Center, then drive on Interstate 84 east through the cityscape and skirt along suburbs and farm country before entering deep forests — all in about a half and hour, depending on the traffic.

There may be no more diverse collection of land uses in the state. When you overlay that with the job of a soil and water conservation district, it is impressive.

According to the Oregon Association of Conservation Districts, they are set up to “work closely with private landowners and managers to help them achieve their stewardship goals and contribute to the natural resource goals of the surrounding community and state.”

That is one thing in a city and quite another in a rural area. The issue is how best to balance those jobs in a district that is so diverse in terms of geography and population.

That is where the urban-rural divide can be most prominent. A person living near Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Portland will have one set of issues and concerns; someone farming outside Corbett will have another set. The overlap is likely to be limited.

That, in a nutshell, is what the urban-rural divide is. It’s not that urban and rural folks don’t like each other. It’s that they usually deal with different issues in their lives. Living in a city and living in the country are that different.

Having said that, urban and rural people depend on each other. Without rural Oregon, urban Oregon would starve. Without urban Oregon, rural Oregon wouldn’t have anywhere to sell its crops and food products.

Get it? Many people don’t.

That is what challenges East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District managers. How do they serve those two worlds in a way that helps private landowners, whether they live in Portland, population 652,503, or near Corbett, population 3,947.

The district finds itself protecting farmland from development, as is often needed in fast-growing areas. It also helps young and aspiring farmers learn the ropes.

And it helps established farmers deal with some of the issues they face, not only with soil and water issues, but with encroaching urbanization.

The urban-rural divide is real. It exists in Portland, Seattle, Boise and every city.

But it also exists in the minds of many people who choose to not understand what life on the other side of the divide is like.