It looked like that trend would continue. However, the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, which began in late 1997, dramatically slowed the flow of farm imports from places such as the Red River Valley. In North Dakota, we rely on agricultural exports more than any state in the union, so it really whiplashes us in a big way. Many other forces are contributing to the farm crisis on the Northern Plains. Though agricultural consolidation has been a fact of life in this region since the 1930s, technological advances and other factors have contributed to even more concentration in recent years.
Land prices rise.
Smaller farm operators are forced to buy bigger equipment to complete. And as the bigger farm operations grow, they begin to bypass local suppliers. Main Street businesses in regional agricultural centers begin to suffer. But it is intensifying. Some of our producers across the state are probably more vulnerable to what's going on now than during the farm crisis of the late 1980s, because they've had, in some cases, a number of years of adverse weather and crop disease, with scab, that sort of thing.