Sanilac Co. Michigan | mike swne - 4/4/2021 17:05
I stumbled on this movie (free on youtube) recently. Had never heard of it but it had a decent cast: Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard and Wilford Brimley. Guessing it was kind of overshadowed by the other farm movie that came out that same month "Places in the Heart".
To me, Country was sort of a nuts and bolts look at the 80's farm crisis through the eyes of an Iowan farm family headed by Brimley, his daughter (Lange) and her husband (Shepard). The bank, pressured by the FmHA, drops the hammer on them by calling their loans. It makes the bank look bad but also leaves some room for Shepard who apparently borrowed too much money in the previous years. It didn't look like they had made any huge capital expenditures like buildings or machinery so we're left to wonder how they got so deep on a "legacy" type farm like this one. They mentioned corn making 94 bu/ac and getting $2.80/bu and the banker told Shepard that he just wasn't a good enough farmer to make it. Even Brimley put the blame on the son-in-law saying that he never would have taken on that debt to begin with.
For those of you that have seen it, how well did it portray what life was like for a midwest corn farmer in 1984? Was it the FmHA that forced the banks (including Farm Credit) to call the loans of customers who were current on payments?
Thanks
Hmm, doesn't make for a nice stroll down memory lane on a beautiful Easter Sunday, but I can comment because I worked the other side of the desk at FmHA at the time.
First off, the agency didn't make any bank, PCA or Land Bank foreclose on anyone since they didn't have that kind of authority. Back then it was mostly direct, not guaranteed loans and FmHA fell in line with all the other creditors when a borrower folded up. Standard operating procedure.
Now, I'll let you in on a little secret. The ones that got the ball rolling on liquidation weren't the creditors, the real villains were the regulatory agencies under which those institutions operated. FDIC, FCA, all the state regulatory agencies, basically those entities that issued your licience to transact business.
The movie..well it's a dang movie, but there's plenty of blame to go around. Might catch hell for saying this, but the primary responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of a lot of dumb farmers. Life lesson #1 is your responsible for meeting the terms and conditions of your debt. Business fail every day so financial incompetence isn't a valid excuse.
Lots of stupid lenders, too. Most of them, particularly your typical community bank, based their decisions on a flimsy one page hand written balance sheet and the customers ancestors pedigree. Piss poor loan documentation, imperfectly secured loans, not even a passing attempt at an accurate cash flow or income projection. The PCA's might, maybe have been a touch more sophisticated. At least they had some loan underwriting procedures in place.
Combine those two factors with an overall economic recession, rampant inflation and a glut of agricultural commodities on the world market and you had the perfect storm. |
Like to hear thoughts on 1984 farm movie "Country"
