Market to Market: The Second 10

The Farm Crisis was bearing down on rural America as 1985 unfolded. High interest rates, low commodity prices, mounting debt and the fallout from the 1980 grain embargo continued to put pressure on farmers. 

Sen. Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota (1978-2005) “That our national security depends just as much on how many farmers we’ve got as how many missiles we’ve got.”

Sid Sprecher, the second executive producer of the program, was concerned the 1970s farm boom would lead to a collapse in the heartland.

Sid Sprecher: Executive Producer 1984 - 2003: “It’s kind of like one farmer described it as ‘you're like you're spinning a bucket of water and you're going faster and faster and you know you don't know how you're going to put the bucket down’ and then the bucket came down and everybody got wet.”

 Thousands of foreclosures brought several century old farming legacies to an end. There were farmers who just closed the door and walked away, others committed suicide. Land prices plummeted, by some estimates up to 60 percent. One farmer murdered his banker.(1044)

Sara Frasher, a producer on the program, was one of several reporters on the Market to Market team that followed the 80s Farm Crisis.

Sara Frasher, Producer 1977-1992: "I always felt a profound obligation to be accurate. And I say that word specifically because I don’t think there is anything such as truth. You give the facts and you let people figure out how they feel about them, come to their own truths.”

Rock and roll musicians joined country music artists to raise money to help farmers retire their debt as part of the first Farm Aid concert. (clip from 1051)

By 1986, Chapter 12 was established in the bankruptcy code. It basically allowed farmers to keep their land, continue farming and pay off their debts. But the struggle was far from over. (1116)

Talk show host Phil Donahue, the nation’s top talk show host of the time, touched on the topic as network media began to cover more of the crisis in rural America. (1120)

Unidentified interviewee: “I don’t want your damn charity, I don’t want your subsidies, I want a price in the market.”

As 1987 rolled around we followed problems with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as they sorted out how to enforce the Immigration Reform Act of 1986. Confusion over the interpretation of the new law was preventing agricultural workers from crossing the border to pick fruit and vegetable crops that were in danger of rotting in the field.(1240) 

Donna Nicholson Svendsen was part of the team in the 1980s covering the countryside from Maine to California.

Donna -Donna Svendsen (Producer/Director, 1983-1989): "We were on the vanguard, I thought of, of a lot of stories in particular you know the agricultural policy, agricultural lifestyle stories… we were doing stories that at the time were, nobody else was really doing and we were covering them at a very deep level."

Along with covering the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Svendsen reported on new cloning technology for the cattle industry. 

The drought of 1988 was leaning hard on farmers with potential yield losses and the associated grain terminal back ups caused by low river levels 1341

We took a look at the fledgling online cattle auction business as we showed how bidders could be half a world away and look over what was up for sale from the comfort of their living rooms. 1402

Trade is something we have covered throughout our history. In this 1988 episode, we reported on the expansion of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that now included agriculture. 1412

Ringing in 1989 saw parts of rural America being rolled over by an expanding drought. Kansas wheat farmers were particularly hard hit as parts of the region received only 50 percent of the average annual rainfall.

One of our first interviews with Temple Grandin took place in 1990. We were able to find out a little more behind Grandin’s compassion for animals that motivated her to design better ways to move them through feedlots and packing plants. 1540 

Temple Grandin, Livestock Handling Consultant: "I think it's very, very important that we treat them humanely.  You know, we're going to shorten their life a bit, but while they're here on this earth, they want to give them a good life.”

As the year closed, we continued with our exploration of how small communities were working to solve the perpetual problem of bringing doctors to rural America. 

In 1991, after nearly 16 years in the host chair, Chet Randolph retired. His replacement was veteran farm reporter Mark Pearson. Over the preceding 12-months, Pearson had been appearing frequently. At Chet’s request, the switch was made quietly from one host to another without any fanfare. 

We explored the concept of urban sprawl with a look at outlet malls being planted on farmland. 

After reporting on the 1989 launch of the advertising campaign “Pork, the other white meat” we took time in 1992 to see if the money being sent to the National Pork Producers Council from the Pork Check-off was meeting the needs of producers. 1438 & 1724

As 1993 dawned, we were looking at the controversial use of BST, a growth hormone used to increase the output of dairy cattle. 1831

It was also the year of devastating Midwestern floods that paralyzed Des Moines, the capital city of Iowa. The major metropolitan area received a knockout blow when its water treatment plant was covered by flood waters. 1840.

In 1994, we took a closer look at who had rights to the scarce resource of water in California. 

 A North Carolina hog lagoon ruptured in June of 1995 sending 25 million gallons of hog manure into tributaries of the nearby New River. The resulting fish kill was one of the opening shots in what became a long fight between North Carolina hog producers and a large number of the Tar Heel state’s citizens. 2041 and 2042

By August, Congress was debating the 1995 Farm Bill. What was dubbed the Freedom to Farm Law called for the end to farm subsidy programs by 2002. Critics of the landmark legislation dubbed it Freedom to Fail. Wrangling over the bill delayed its passage until 1996. 

And we continued to analyze the markets with the likes of Walt Hackney, Doug Jackson and Virgil Robinson. John Roach was often seen across the second decade of the program. This was also the decade where Sue Martin began her tenure as the first woman to join the analysis crew. 

For Market to Market, I’m David Miller.

contact: miller@iowapbs.org