The way threads can wander back and forth is one of the beauties of NAT and one of the reasons it splintered off of SF many years ago. There are a lot of interesting comments here as people reflect on the 80s and compare to today, spurred by your original post.  Here are a couple of my thoughts on 80s ag compared to today that I typed out last night:

FWIW, two (of many) things that seem to jump out at me comparing the 80's farm economy to today's.

1. Land ownership - There is much more of a bifurcation today between those that own paid-for land and those that are currently renting or buying high-priced land. If you are farming paid-for land you are in fairly good shape to ride things out. Banks, input suppliers and equipment manufacturers love folks who own paid-for land.

2. Ag equipment manufacturers and ag input suppliers margins - in the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a major change in Ag supplier and other US corporations. The McKinsey consulting firm and others went around to Deere and others preaching the mantra of "shareholder value" as being more important than customers, dealers or employees and tied executive pay to share (stock) prices rather than other measures of "success". Consequently average executive pay climbed compared to average employee pay. 

In 2024 for the S&P 500 companies avg CEO to avg worker pay was 285:1 compared to about  42:1 in 1980 and 20:1 in the 1960s. This tie of executive pay to share price and little else leads to today's push for high margins and stock prices above all and is a major reason that equipment and input prices have risen so much and are unlikely to come down. Public (stock issuing) corporations now emphasize anything that improves their margins, especially software and electronics.

As equipment gets larger, the number sold goes down and each piece sold has to support a larger burden of margin and the corporate stock price.