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| One difference between 80s and now is earning capacity from off farm job vs current size of bills on the farm. A person's farm on average wasn't so big (or high priced) that an off farm job couldn't help save it. A lot of farms now have such large costs to operate that if in trouble they couldn't really solve a problem with an off farm job.
A neighbor was in the banking business in the 80s, farm credit--doubtful accounts. He said another difference was the old guys would do everything they had to including sell what they had to to pay off the debt and keep the rest. The young guys thought everything was "negotiable" and that caused a lot of problems with bad loans getting bigger and debt becoming insurmountable.
I know neighbors who had 18% operating lines and 13% land loans. Tough to stay in business when 30% goes to interest before landlord share and your share. | |
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1981.
