Some receive food stamps and others are forced to get emergency food assistance from church pantries or relatives. Their children want for new clothes, and trips to the doctor and dentist are reserved for emergencies. At least during the mid-1980s there was some national recognition and response to the problems of farmers. By the 1990s, nobody wanted to hear about the problems of farmers, and most of the programs that had been set up to help financially distressed farmers had disappeared. Not only financial distress, but also intergenerational conflicts about running the farm contribute to this.
Many farmers see losing the farm as failing both previous and future generations of their family.
Farmers have equated the grief from the loss of their farm to the death of a family member. It is difficult for farmers and rural residents not to personalize the financial distress they experience. On the farmer's part, this leads to an overwhelming sense of guilt and may put them at risk of suicide. If guilt is the result of self-blame, then anger is the result of blaming others for one's circumstance. Many farmers experienced a sense of betrayal as a result of lending practices that at one point in time encouraged them to borrow money and later blamed them for getting in over their heads.