http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-01-23/news/8501050158_1_farm-economy-farm-states-farm-aid
January 23, 1985
The Iowa congressional delegation and a group of its top state officials, including Gov. Terry Branstad, called on the Reagan administration Tuesday to make good on a campaign promise for $650 million in credit relief for financially hard-pressed Midwestern farmers.
Republican Sen. Charles Grassley said that Budget Director David Stockman is a major obstacle in getting the White House to take the farm-credit crisis seriously and that unless he does, "we may have to call for his resignation."
Grassley`s Senate colleague, freshman Democrat Tom Harkin, noting farm protests across the nation, warned that the "specter of widespread violence thoughout the Midwest is there." He said farmers may "take to the streets" to protest government inaction. He predicted small runs on banks and bankruptcy for some small businesses whose health is tied to the farm economy.
http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id395.htm
In the early 1970s, lowered trade barriers coupled with record Soviet purchases of American grain resulted in a sharp increase in agricultural exports. Farm incomes and commodity prices soared. [FN3] The removal of restrictions on Federal Land Bank lending, coupled with increased lending by other entities for farmland purchases in the Seventies, led to rising land values. Conveniently low interest rates persuaded many farmers -- and would-be farmers -- to go deeply into debt on the assumption that commodity prices and land values would continue to rise. [FN4] Farm household income had been below the national average in the 1960s; in the next decade it was higher than the national average for every year except one. But it would return to the 1960s levels in the Eighties. The agricultural "boom" didn't last long.
This essay will explore how the American farm community, the Reagan administration, and the American public responded to the crisis. We will briefly examine the history of federal farm policy since the New Deal and determine the ways in which it contributed to the disaster of the 1980s. We will see how the political ramifications of the Reagan "market-oriented" approach to the farm problem resulted in a confused administration policy that remained largely unchanged from those of previous administrations, and how that policy affected the future of American farmers as well as consumers and taxpayers.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/06/941612/-Des-Moines-Register-Forgets-Reagan-s-Devastation-of-Iowa
I am the grandson of an Iowa corn farmer. My grandfather was fortunate to make it through the 1980's farm crisis without losing the family farm where my father's family grew up.
But many thousands of others weren't so lucky.
Now, Reagan didn't cause the farm crisis. There were many factors at play including shrinking export markets and higher interest rates, not all of which can be attributed to the Reagan administration. Never the less, Reagan drug his feet in response to the crisis. His laissez-faire attitude let it fester. He figured the free market would take care of it.
And it did. The free market caused Willie Nelson to stage a concert. Because that's what we want from our government, to sit idly by while our country crumbles, and let celebrity fund-raisers solve all of our problems. That's the free market way!
= new reply since forum marked as read
