User:DatzPhil/sandbox

Overview
A farm crisis is a term describing times of agricultural recession, low crop prices and low farm incomes. In the US, most recently this was during the 1980s. Women played an important role in helping to keep the farm by seeking off-farm employment many opting to commute to larger cities to earn higher salaries.

Origins
Farmers had plenty to worry from a tremendous accumulation of farm debt in the 1970’s followed by high interest rates in the 1980's. This depleted many wealthy farmers of their resources and cause the agriculture land market to go nearly bankrupt.

Cause and Affect
In order to be profitable and yield more farm produce, farmers are forced to adopt the use of newer machinery which required less people. The need for contemporary farm technology demanded a vast amount of funds. Automation such as tractors, grain storage silos and other technologies such as irrigation, improved farm procedures but is expensive to maintain. The addition cost of land and the additional financial assets resulted in a very tight allowance.

Recession
The economic state around the mid 1970s was good enough that interest rates were low enough for farmers to take on loan at a low cost. Foreign countries had an eye for American agriculture product and had enough funds to pay for it, thus foreign markets were valuable to the farmers. Farmers bought more land on account when prices for agriculture land seemed feasible. However in the 80’s the economy crashed. As a result, foreign markets raised their interest rates up. Farmers suffered as they could not keep up with the the loans required to function each year. Since, consumers tend to buy less when the economic times are bad, farm products became cheaper. When consumers wanted less less demand and prices pummeled for their products, many American farmers were not able to reimburse the bank for the loans they used for their land and farm technology. Farmers still believed they were able to raise better crops and the economy would be better within a few years but that did not happen.

Now
In 2013, of the 2.3 million American farms and ranches, only 270,000 farms generate 80% of production and carry 60% of U.S. farm debt. Larger growing agricultural producers face much more debt unlike when it was spread out to all agricultural producers in the 1980s farm crisis. In addition, as agriculture producers became more connected with other companies, when they are in debt, the other companies are effected as well.