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The US Farm Crisis and the Restructuring of American Agriculture: Domestic and International Dimensions

In: The International Farm Crisis

Author

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  • Frederick H. Buttel

Abstract

The US farm crisis — or ‘farm financial stress’, as it is often referred to euphemistically in America — is actually an ensemble of many crises of national and international political economy. Its most immediate and salient components, as experienced directly by farmers, are heavy debt loads (and hence onerous debt service obligations), rapid declines in the value of farm land and other agricultural assets, low prices for many of the most important US farm commodities (especially soybeans, wheat, and corn), and a somewhat heightened pace of voluntary and involuntary liquidation of assets since 1981. More structurally, the US farm crisis is closely rooted in extraordinarily high real interest rates that have prevailed due to Reagan Administration fiscal and monetary policy, which have had a dramatic effect on the capital-intensive — and hence interest-rate-sensitive — agricultural sector. The farm crisis also reflects the contradictions of continued increases in US (and world) productive capacity in the basic grains and oilseeds due to technological change. The capacity to produce has relentlessly increased even as the means for purchasing and valorising this expanded production have stagnated. The US farm crisis is also a policy crisis — a protracted struggle among many contending forces that makes it virtually impossible to arrive at a political solution to problems of the agricultural economy without (and, in some respects, despite) massive state intervention and subsidy programmes.

Suggested Citation

  • Frederick H. Buttel, 1989. "The US Farm Crisis and the Restructuring of American Agriculture: Domestic and International Dimensions," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: David Goodman & Michael Redclift (ed.), The International Farm Crisis, chapter 3, pages 46-83, Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-10332-4_3
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-10332-4_3
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Philip McMichael & David Myhre, 1990. "Global Regulation vs. the Nation-State: Agro-Food Systems and the New Politics of Capital," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 22(1), pages 59-77, March.
    2. Thompson, Susan J. & Tadlock Cowan, J., 2000. "Globalizing Agro-Food Systems in Asia: Introduction," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 401-407, March.
    3. R Le Heron, 1991. "New Zealand Agriculture and Changes in the Agriculture—Finance Relation during the 1980s," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 23(11), pages 1653-1670, November.
    4. Marjoleine Hennis, 2002. "New Transatlantic Conflicts: American and European Food Policies Compared," EUI-RSCAS Working Papers 1, European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS).

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