Everything is unraveling. Everything has went to hell. Not in a handbasket. In the breadbasket of the world. October is a time of frantic activity in the Red River Valley.
Huge combines raise clouds of dust as they lumber across fields of soybeans and small grains.
Giant semi-trailer trucks speed down the highways, carrying mountains of sugar beets and potatoes to warehouses and processing plants. But if you look closely, it's easy to see that this last harvest of the century is not a happy one. Much of the machinery is old, with vintage trucks and tractors from the early 1980s or even the late 1970s doing much of the work. A decade of falling crop prices and plummeting profit margins has eaten up millions in equity and forced farmers to deplete savings accounts, borrow ever-increasing amounts to keep going, and forced thousands off the farms. Many experts are predicting a speed-up in the exodus, with as many as 6,000 family farms ceasing operations in the next year.