The worsening price prospects for crops and livestock now has the Wells Fargo banks joining with bank associations and farm groups to lobby for turning the aid spigots back on in Washington. Farmers started the current down cycle in agriculture prices in better financial shape than they did for the agricultural recession of the 1980s, Anderson says. That said, some farmers across the Midwest are again losing equity as they leverage debt on their farms. The truth is, they have. If you start cutting out fertilizers or chemicals, you really kill yourself.
Regional differences are evident in problems farmers have paying debt.
At AgriBank in St. Paul, northwest Minnesota and North Dakota got a head start coping with downturn because of disease, while west-central Minnesota and Illinois farmers have stronger balance sheets after years of good weather and better prices for their crops. Now, Anderson says, parts of Arkansas are having problems with low cotton prices. And most crop producers are looking at limited marketing options after the summer and fall harvests, he says. In Texas, Givens is frustrated. Givens says he had 20 farm customers on the credit watch list in 1992, in what were healthier times for the Texas farm economy.