Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | I have to agree with your observation about some loud and pushy farmers (& businessmen in general) but more often than not, these fellows eventually come a cropper.
As defined by John C. Hotten's A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words in 1859, the phrase has come to refer to any failure rather than just the specific failure to stay on a horse:
"Cropper, 'to go a cropper', or 'to come a cropper', that is, to fail badly." |