At 73 years of age, rural America has been in distress nearly my entire life. For most readers, few can remember true good times other than an occasional year or two. Stringing three good years together has proven to be so rare that I truly don’t recall it happening. Stories are told of the farmer who bought an 80 or a quarter-section of land in the 1950s and paid for it with his first wheat crop. Ah, those were the days!

Farmers struggled through the Great Depression of the 1930s with limited support from the government’s Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. In the words of Kevin Englebert in “A Brief History of Parity Pricing,” “Politicians and agricultural leaders realized that prices for farm products were not in themselves of primary significance. Of far greater importance was what farm products would buy in terms of clothing, energy, feed, machinery, fertilizer, services and other items farmers needed for living and food production. The 1933 AAA authorized Congress to reestablish commodity prices that would give farmers the purchasing power, with respect to items they buy, equivalent to the purchasing power of agricultural commodities in a ‘base’ period.”

That base period identified 1910-1914 as the “Golden Years” of rural economic equality with that of the urban workforce giving farmers the purchasing power to sustain the business of feeding the country. The problem was that the floor for pricing was set too low to accomplish the desired result.

In the atmosphere of unstable world-wide economic conditions, war returned to Europe, and in due time, America was drawn into World War II. Americans geared up to support the war effort, and as in WWI, American farmers were asked to “win the war with wheat.” Production soared as America was tasked with not only feeding the country and its soldiers, but much of devastated Europe.

To encourage that production, minimum commodity price floors were raised in 1942. Support for basic crops was set at 90 percent of parity. Prices soared above parity giving rise to a new prosperity never before seen in rural America.

Unfortunately, many critics of the parity system failed to realize the importance of maintaining economic equality across rural America.

In response to political pressure, a new 1948 AAA was enacted, diminishing purchasing power from farm production with “adjusted base prices.” To soften the blow, the previous floor of 90 percent was extended until 1950 with a varying range of 60-90 percent of parity after 1950.

Prices continued at rates near parity into the mid-1950s, but the decisions made in 1948 reverberated through the coming decades with declining rates of profit for industry, losses of liquidity in banks, ongoing inflationary pressures and fewer farmers on the land. The loss of farm parity would ultimately shatter rural America.

In 1972, I began farming on a small scale as I had growing up with my father and uncle. With a brand new wife and dreams as big as the night sky, all I really wanted to do was live a good life away from all the world’s troubles. I didn’t know it then, but I was stepping into a cauldron that was just beginning to heat up. I, and all the rest of us who were trying to live the American Dream of freedom and carrying on in family footsteps, all of us were nothing more than the proverbial frog that had been dropped into a pot of warm cozy water that was slowly, but ohso-steadily growing warmer. My story is just one version that thousands of us in rural America were facing, each in our own way.

In 1972, U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, with big grain companies, negotiated a Russian grain deal leaving farmers in the dark while his buddies in the big grain companies squeezed as much grain out of the farmers as they could before the price of wheat rose to over $5 a bushel. Very few farmers sold at $5. We couldn’t believe prices of over $4, and nervously sold, thinking the bottom would drop out.

Butz favored big agriculture and told farmers to “Get big or get out.” He followed that with the admonition to plant “fencerow to fencerow.” The race was on.

I remember a cow/calf conference in which a university “expert” told us, “If you are in the cattle business for the lifestyle, you had better get out, because only those who operate on a business platform are going to survive.”

Inflation set in. Lenders encouraged us to invest, invest. Then the bottom fell out. Farmers organized a “Tractorcade” to Washington D. C., to draw attention to the economic disaster unfurling on the farms and ranches across the country. I stayed home, determined to cling to my lifestyle.

The early 80s played out as though we were living a nightmare that wouldn’t go away. Suicides were reported all too often. Farm sales were nearly an everyday affair as tens of thousands of farmers lost everything. The pot was boiling, but we were so used to it, we just kept paddling, hoping for a respite that would help us endure one more year. Somehow, we always made one more year.

At one time, I recall going to my lender to ask for $100 to feed my family. Finally, the lender told me I had to sell out. He had the gall to ask, “How did you get yourself into this situation?” Sitting behind his brand new desk in the brand new building he had just built, the question was absurd. I knew I was worth more than they were figuring. Sold most of my cows and paid them off. Never again...

The water in that cauldron was boiling, but we just carried on waiting for next year. Seems like it has always been “next year” on The Way West.

“The Cowboy” Jim Gray can be reached at 220 21st Rd., Geneseo, KS 67444, (785) 531-2058 or kansascowboy@ kans.com