Chuck Grassley: “there is a not-so-perfect storm brewing for farmers in my State of Iowa and in agricultural States generally. Many…”

“there is a not-so-perfect storm brewing for farmers in my State of Iowa and in agricultural States generally. Many factors are coming together--and all at once--like low grain prices, high input costs, consolidation in the industry, and uncertainty from trade and tariffs. It is beginning to look more and more like the 1980s to me. One thing that concerns me is the lowering of land values in Iowa. Land value has gone down 3 percent since last year and down 5.4 percent since the same time in 2023. That is not as bad as it was in the 1980s. There was a very catastrophic drop in prices compared to what I just quoted you for now. And in the 1980s, that didn't happen overnight; it kind of crept up on us very slowly. We don't want to let that happen again, so we need to be vigilant today. When it comes to land prices, as you know, if farmers lose too much land value, they won't be able to leverage against it for debt to cover their expenses. That happened in the 1980s, and as I said, it kind of crept up on us at that particular time, and Congress didn't see it coming soon enough. Congress waited too long to act. Farmers had been pleading with Congress for 2 or 3 years in the 1980s before Congress was able to pass some help for the farmers. In the meantime, farmers went bankrupt, and a lot of farmers were lost due to suicide.”