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In Hills, Iowa, a farmer kills his banker, his neighbor, his wife, and then himself. Near Ruthton, Minnesota, a farmer and his son murder two bank officials. In South Dakota's Union County, a Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) administrator kills his wife, daughter, son, and dog before committing suicide. In the note he leaves behind he claims the pressures of his job became too much for him to bear. [FN1]

These tragic circumstances were the byproducts of a crisis that struck the American farm in the 1980s, a crisis that had tremendous human costs. Surveys revealed that cases of child abuse and neglect rose 10% in a nine-county rural area in southern Iowa during this period. Studies also showed an alarming rise in divorce rates and alcohol abuse in farm families. [FN2] Some individuals broke under the strain of an economic disaster in America's rural heartland; many more who depended on American agriculture for their livelihood faced financial ruin.

Why did it happen?

In the early 1970s, lowered trade barriers coupled with record Soviet purchases of American grain resulted in a sharp increase in agricultural exports. Farm incomes and commodity prices soared. [FN3] The removal of restrictions on Federal Land Bank lending, coupled with increased lending by other entities for farmland purchases in the Seventies, led to rising land values. Conveniently low interest rates persuaded many farmers -- and would-be farmers -- to go deeply into debt on the assumption that commodity prices and land values would continue to rise. [FN4] Farm household income had been below the national average in the 1960s; in the next decade it was higher than the national average for every year except one. But it would return to the 1960s levels in the Eighties. The agricultural "boom" didn't last long. [FN5]

This essay will explore how the American farm community, the Reagan administration, and the American public responded to the...