The thing that made the 80's so tough was that the downturn just dragged on for years.  A bad year can be made up for with a few good years.  Three or four or five bad years in a row is when the real long term damage gets done.  This time around it will likely be a little different, because there are fewer, but larger farmers, so there will be fewer, but more spectacular crashes.  The "winners of the losers" were the first ones to quit.  The ones that ground out several more years of losing value didn't have anything left by the time they finally gave up.