In the 1980s, foreclosure forced one in five out of business nationwide. In my book, The Farm Debt Crisis of the 1980s , I discuss at length the economic woes of the sector in that era but there is no support for that statement. Surely no one would expect failure of farmers to lead necessarily to land moving out of agricultural production. For more than a century, it has been accepted that land values are price determined , not price determining. As noted above, land values reflect the discounted values of expected profitability.
Land values are high only because supported by expectations of profitability.
Some statements vastly overstate the situation. On page 86, Blank discourses at length about the adverse impact of death taxes. That is several times the average farm net worth in this country. What little research data appear are not cited so that sources could be checked. Table 6-1, p. 67, lacks explanation of the sample and the statistical basis for conclusions.