"Mad Enough To Punch Dough"

The Cost of Shame During The Farm Crisis Of The 80's

It is amusing to me that while I cannot recall what Frank looked like, I can still feel the hammer blow of embarrassment in my gut for backing his elderly and dying father’s Jaguar into and onto a fire hydrant. Just over 17 years ago, and I won’t think about it for months at a time when I’ll be driving and focus in on a fire hydrant in passing, and the ichor of regret will climb up my spine, much as it did when I came to a jolting stop atop my 2ft tall crimson pillar of shame as Frank gesticulated his dismay alongside much colorful language.

A lot of red all around that day.

That small instance of shame is still clear in my mind, and I can also feel the regret of not acknowledging the hydrant*, not turning soon enough, not having a three-man spotting crew to assist me in backing out of a driveway. While I can now laugh off my silly mistake, not all instances of shame and regret are so easily forgotten. If shame were a seed and regret the resulting tree, then a forest the size of Iowa was silently grown during the Farm Crisis of the 80’s, and at the end their ashamed silence saw the loss of the most farms since the Great Depression.

Ya’ll remember Earl Butz? He was the Suckritary of Ag under Nixon and was (in)famous for “Get Big or Get Out," the movement where farmers were being encouraged to grow more crops than ever before in the early to mid-70's. His encouragement was perfectly timed as crops failed in Europe (specifically Russia) and selling to them brought about a low stocking quantity in the US, which in turn increased the profit of the grain being grown. Repeat for several years off and on until a boom results.

Yes, the farmer was able to finally start seeing some of the fruits of their labor. Banks were leaving their vaults open to anyone who wanted money for agriculture-related businesses. Land was expensive and often for sale, and people were encouraged to buy neighboring plots and work those too. Bankers actually visited people to encourage them to buy more land…in person…at their house. I would be weirded out if my banker, whomever they are, visited me.

Oh, how could one forget the tractors and equipment! OHHHH the tractor options and attachments! Farmers were having the time of their lives.

The Pig Juicer 2000 was a crowd draw, but ultimately not what the American people wanted.

Behind every good boom is an even better bust, especially whenever the outgoing President Carter puts an embargo on selling grain to Russia because they were involved in a conflict in Afghanistan, which just encouraged Russia to buy from South America and start growing in Ukraine. Reagan came in and took it away, but the new southern suppliers were cheaper, and things were starting to get ugly as prices bottomed out on commodities and farmers lost thousands over night.

The naivety of the farmer is something that cannot be ignored; however, if it is viewed through the lens of a person whose life is spent toiling a piece of land, who trusts their bankers and politicians because they themselves are honest, and who loves his family and enjoys seeing them and their land grow and prosper, then maybe it can be forgiven. Remember, the crisis was high inflation, followed by Fed hiked interest rates, which raised loan payments higher than what farmers could even pay on because their credit (land value) had tanked. Men and women who grew America didn’t have time to worry about that; they relied on men who worked in banks and politics to be honest with them and caution them in good faith. Unfortunately, that was not the case as the banks themselves seemed to lose all sense of caution.

The internet was but a twinkle in some nerd’s eyes, so the farmer couldn’t even get bad financial advice online. As a whole, they simply didn’t comprehend finances and the danger that they were opening themselves to by carrying all that debt. Also, who can not sympathize with desiring a life of trying to have just a little bit extra, and when the chance came to grasp a brand new car or color TV, seizing it? The American dream. By the end of the crisis, it was shown that one-third of all the farmers had held two-thirds of all the debt when the banks came calling. Family farms were lost in a single night, with more continuing to fall in the following months and years. The families who leapt at the chance to claim just a little bit more out of life and trust their banks and government could be found packing cars and trucks as their farm was sold out from under them.

“Wanda DID have my gravy ladle!” - probably uttered during a farm auction

Sadly, the loss of the farm was not even the beginning of the end for those who found themselves in a world quite alien. Agriculture as an industry lost thousands of jobs during this period, and small towns saw family stores go belly up as farmers had to move to cities to procure employment. The amount of stress and pressure rural people were under started to show in ways that neighbors and towns were wholly unfamiliar with. Alcohol abuse and domestic violence were noted to be on the rise, as was suicide. One of the more heartbreaking scenes in the documentary is a farm wife speaking, where she recounts trying to talk her husband “off the ledge” and eventually she just had to leave him to it. Shame.

The shame felt by the people as they retell their stories is palpable. Bankers and bureaucrats only saw the land and farm as a business, when what actually existed was identity and self-worth mixed into the soil with decades of blood, sweat, and tears. The farms that fell were the ones who wanted so badly for just a little bit more out of life, and while I cannot find anywhere that it says it, my suspicion is that those who were told to reach for the stars only to lose everything were the silent majority who faded away in both spirit and health.

Of course, elected officials became embroiled in the farm crisis as soon as it started to make headlines. David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, took the brunt of the heat and ridiculed the farmers for spending what they didn’t have, and that they shouldn’t be complaining for playing the market and losing. Interestingly enough, he has penned more than a couple of books about corruption and capitalism. While he was technically correct about the fact that adults made decisions and were now being held accountable for said decisions, he was eventually proven wrong on a moral level when the nation and farmers started to speak out.

That’s right, get out the vuvuzelas and bagpipes! Throw on the lights and slap on the make-up! Here come the 80’s movie actor activist squad, and they are going to Washington to appeal to what has already been an uncaring and unyielding system. As the eyes of America settled on the actors petitioning in Washington, artist-driven concerts like Farm Aid also brought awareness to the plight of the farmer, and it still took American citizens donating their own time and money to actually make a difference in terms of supporting the farmer in legal council, job assistance, food drives, and so on.

During all the jam sessions and tearful famous people bringing attention to farmers, one might ask where the farmers were in all of this. They were driving tractors to Washington in a Tractorcade and writing letters to politicians. They were also traveling and speaking to other farmers about what they had lost and how they felt that the system had failed them in their time of need, despite having fed a whole nation for decades without complaint. They were going to neighbors who they hadn’t seen at church or the store and letting them know that they “were still THEIR kind of people." The shame was understood by all even when it wasn’t felt by all, and there were many neighbors who faded away because they were too ashamed to continue their old life the same way and they had lost it all.

Despite the coolness of a Tractorcade and the iron resolve, honesty, work ethic, and stoicism so often associated with farmers, only 2% of affected farmers actually protested. Fewer than 1 out of 100 people joined any action groups.

WHAT?!

Upon hearing this part of the documentary, I had to play it back several times while taking notes because I was certain I had misheard. How? HOW?! How could people not have been so mad at the government and banks that they didn’t grab a single pitchfork? They’re farmers; they have them all over the place!

Shame. The farmer was not a stupid man, and when his trusted banker came to him in the 70’s and said to him that he was doing a great job feeding America and Europe and that there was extra money and he could have some loaned to him to buy more land, equipment, maybe cattle or pigs, he leapt at it. The years continued to be good, and the banker kept telling him to grow, until the sheriff showed up and told him the bank owned his land.

Shame. The farmer wasn’t forced into it; he gladly took on more, and it was HIS fault he owed money. HIS fault the family land went to someone else. HIS fault the kids had to live in the city. HIS decision to borrow. HIS failure.

That poisonous blame penetrated the heart and soul of the farmer and stole all the fight out of him. The government came in and threw in the Food Security Act of 1985 offered a lot too late. Chapter 12 allowed filing for agricultural bankruptcy, again better than nothing but implemented in `86. There was also an Ag credit the government made available totaling four billion dollars…in 1987. It was all too little and too late.

What a slap in the face to all those who lost their farms during the height of the crisis.

The Great Depression saw the loss of three-quarters of a million farms, and the Farm Crisis saw another quarter million farms lost throughout America. Those one million farms that no longer exist on average held four people, and with some simple math it is possible to see that if those one million farms had continued through roughly four generations, then we would have 64 million more farmers than we have today. That is 64 million more people who would have the opportunity to decide how they grow their food versus the two million farmers we have today. That is 64 million more people who know what food should look like and aren’t afraid to challenge the law when it is wrong.

I mourn the loss of the world we could have had if only people would have rallied together and faced our ever-encroaching government together, but time and complacency have made us too divided and weak to do much more than watch our freedom dwindle.

Shame on us.

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*for those concerned, I did end up acknowledging the hydrant and we became fast friends. Unfortunately, like many in the Midwest who were young and poor, he fell into methamphetamine use and I lost contact. Shame.