These are manageable ratios. Clearly, the statistics tell a confused story. The emergency seems over, yet the overall picture is not particularly cheering. Farms continue to disappear, and farm income, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is declining. The huge crisis of the 80s seems to be over, but, as our subtitle implies, family farms are definitely not out of the woods.
Farm prices are uncertain, discouraging, and generally out of the farmer's control.
Borrowing on the assets has become more difficult. Land values, which used to rival those vast black pools of oil under foreign deserts, have followed a similar roller coaster of value. There was a time people described the farmer as land rich and money poor. Today's farmer defies simple categorization. Some family farms, suffering under low market prices, high interest rates, and a steady decline in supports and subsidies have become little more than a pipeline, carrying cash between the banks and the suppliers.