Farm Town

Oh. Oh. Oh. Major funding for this program was provided by friends of Iowa Public Television. You don't get to run around the circle if you get your mouth is always there. For. Crop's out there. Use your own money here your own money there. And you know you're going to take out all the top to take care of the bills and everything and you've got to go. Get. Yourself first because your control. Is beyond anything I've ever dreamed of that. You can not. Make this thing better. Farmers are in trouble but what when they're in trouble and cannot support

the community. That does make a big difference. It's evident when you walk around downtown and walk through neighborhoods. So many more. Homes are up for sale. Some of many shops are closed. Most people coming into the community here is struggling with some difficulty. They're surprised that this could be such a tragedy because it has the air here and there is a great deal of prosperity. Mr. Quirke. Is.

It. Rural communities and agriculture. They've grown up together. Westward expansion. People who established farms and towns grew up to support the farm population. In Iowa. It has become a symbolic relationship. Constituting an important part of our social fabric. A partnership based on growth. And food production. Today. The chronic condition of the farm economy has reaped a bitter harvest. Plummeting agricultural exports land values and farm income has strained

not only the farm. But the town as well. The ripple effect has moved beyond the farm gate and is having devastating effects on the farm town. The problems of sibly Iowa. I know. For. Many of Iowa's towns in fact an April 1982 Iowa State University Cooperative Extension Service report says two to three hundred Iowa communities are facing severe population decline and afterworld a concern for their very existence. This northwest Iowa town of 2800 people has some advantages however its location on a diagonal route between Sioux City and Minneapolis brings commerce to this Osceola county seat and some business and industry continues to thrive. But not enough to let people on Main Street are the best barometer for assessing local economics. People who own the shops print the news or help the needy. The last two years. My my guess is that we've lost a

net 15 the. Final quarter I understand in 84 showed us show that our retail business was down. It was down 22 percent. I believe we began to feel or sense a difference here. It's a period before. We. Suddenly cut back to too many EPG issues which almost becomes the standard now. And for those who know anything about newspaper business you understand that the number of pages is largely determined by the volume of advertising. So the reduction eight pages reflects. A reduction in advertising activity. Shopping centers still seem to be going to either tell the pet shop hold the big shopping or doubt it really. That probably won't help us either. Good times. We're like five to six years ago they were stupid. In fact I even even tried to make light of my sons in a competition with me. But

I'm glad I did. No I mean we had enough work for two families you know for two families at that time. OK I'll give you this. And I'd say our business is off from. If you take now as compared to three. And a half to four years goes down about 40 percent total your total volume before the crisis. You know people would order things ahead of time. They they'd look ahead and they'd say are you going to have a fall special on hang on for for a farm wagon tires. Yeah I'm going to have one we always have a fall tire sale. Keep me in mind when that sale comes on. Just put me down for four six eight tires you know. That doesn't happen today it's ordered as it's needed. They wait until that foreign tire blows out and they don't travel. To. Are. Pregnant women.

And if it's. Everyday we're having more people come in. We've just seen our services you know almost double in the last year. And most of them are just young low income families that just can't seem to make ends meet. You know from one check to the other or their food stamps last month they just just are having all kinds of problems where we have fewer people working here now than what we did four or five years ago. We had. Seen a very difficult time for everybody here economically and that somehow we're going to have to pull together that and we're going to have to make some kind of future in this time of transition for us. And be aware of the persons who aren't able to continue with their payments with or with pledges. And understand that we're all in this together on Sundays in a congregation. There's some people that come that are looking for some

sustenance that are looking for something to keep a toehold on to find a sense of belonging a sense of community a family that maybe gone back to basics just a little bit to be in the same situation that everybody else is in. As we begin to see some commonalities we have together and in some things we can do to strengthen one another and support one another. I have to keep emphasizing. The word family. Our unity. And solidarity. Our identity. This isn't just a crisis people it's a crisis of people in the land and I don't know where you separate one from the other. We say things about our

roots. We talk about this is our home. Land. We talk about sowing seeds to harvest hope. We are a people whose culture. And identity is rooted in the land and the people. The sibly community is made up of both farm and town. And while the town's economy suffers the families on the farm suffer as well. With some families desperately trying to hold on to a way of life. There was a few years long almost had his father paid for running a mixed bag. Probably more than he should have. That's time enough to think to do. The big and. Borrowed money and fed a lot of cash and can of course this money year after year and it just catches up with you. We finally get to the point we can make final payments and. So he was on the phone to. Call me a short time and it. Just goes from one thing to another. Funny you don't make payments you don't on the vine.

About the monster. I love this one and worked side by side with them. Let's hear some verifiable. Fact. Too. Yes. I. Try out there with you get all. Funding. And. So. I guess. I. Had. Maybe I was so eager to do. I don't know. You kind of withdrawn them a bit because you didn't get it. And. Within your family. Because you don't want to bring pain or any fucking pain on anyone else with them because they are already suffering and this goes on. And we have the Point. Hey we've got all come together we're never going to come out of this thing but there's a problem. Sure they feel there's a need and it's growing

quicker and we can respond to. I think when you have any community or any family going through the enormous structural stress that our families are they're having to contend with situations that they never imagined they have to contend with they're having to draw upon resources in themselves that they don't even know they have yet. Initially it was hard for families because there was that fear that if we speak then folks will know we're in jeopardy. And I think families are now realizing that there are a whole lot of people in their neighborhood that are in jeopardy and the risk of not speaking out means isolation not only for their own families but for their own communities. For us to preserve for the generations to come. Just as a nation we take that seriously. We train go from far oriented families raise or raised in the area. And that's why. For.

Science. That's been. Life. Is good in the spring when it's over. Oh. Yeah. I enjoy. The. First. Friday and the fires you know around the fields all around us. That's great. It's a new beginning again. And I think that's why. It's. Great. When I went back in. January before. My little farm you. Will see. How long the bombing was a way of life for this for years. We kind of had to hope so we got old enough and a lot of boys go to school once and you want to do that you know when they got out of school they were going to go we're just going to go to the farm. That's a lost cause.

Now we could feed some hay off the rack of cattle. They were angry for a while. Too. Know. We thought we're never going to get out of this mess and they are very quiet because they kept them out within themselves. Children are afraid of making their parents feel even worse than they already do. They need to know that there is a safe place where they can talk. The other thing that kids are telling me they need is they need to know what's really happening in the family. They need to know that bankruptcy does not mean that you come home from school one day and the house is gone. I need to know that they can be a part of the solution. I know I've spent nights crying in my bed. I hear Mom Dad downstairs talking about how tough it is and you know wherever I can get my mind and how how can we extend credit to this one farmer when we know you might extend the credit to and they do it anyway. And it's really

hard. And you just pray that it doesn't work out. My dad for the first time ever I've seen him worried. I've never seen that my dad before and he talks about you know he had to save money and we have to do things we have to. Help the house prices come up and go home prices come up and that's just I'm I'm really worried. I don't know what else. You know I try to help them and say it's all right Dad you're doing fine. There's other folks the same way. But don't worry. I've had a number of farm families that I've visited with tell me give me all the stations of the tensions that would surely end up dividing communities dividing communities. Whose fault is it that that our neighbor went broke when someone maybe to say well it's lenders fault. Others say well no it's it's the federal government's fault. Others say well no it's fraud. Those tensions the divisive tendency over who's to blame. The concern now with many of our other banks.

And so undoubtedly is they are faced with with heavy losses in the agricultural sector that they're tightening up their lending policies. They're feeling the same thing that we are. And it's hard for us to deal with them under their they're under stress too and it's even hard to talk to people who are under stress to come to some agreement when times is good. Farmers are making money. Few years back. You couldn't get enough money from the bank. Things went sour stuff started going down. When. Four years ago it was bringing 3000 bucks an acre. Now you're lucky if you're going to get 12 to 15. The bitterness felt by farmer Richard Kruger is an example of the tension that exists in many communities between farmer and lender. With the lenders on many occasions

being caught in the middle between their customers and their stockholders. On this day Krueger's machinery is being hauled away to be sold by his local bank to pay off debts debts that Kruger says he would have paid had he and his bank come to an agreement over an operating loan that would be guaranteed by the Farmers Home Administration. The sticking point fifteen acres of land given to Kruger by his father and there is disagreement about whether the land was required as collateral under federal lending rules or whether it wasn't. The bank says it was Kruger disagrees and their relationship was strained. Oh. Yeah we tried to come to an agreement. I went in every time they called up. And I said I would not mortgage that ground over there. It's been in the family for 80 years. What the hell do you do. I end up going on food stamps. I don't know.

That's what friends and neighbors helped me. With Money. The bank says it does all it can to keep farmers in business and in fact the bank claims off camera had the sticking point about the 15 acres has been resolved and FM ha guaranteed loan would have been beneficial for both the farmer and the bank because the farmer would have stayed in business and remained a partner with the bank. There is a great deal of tension and if a lender begins to experience loans that don't earn interest or experience losses when loans are liquidated there are just two things the lender can do. One is they can take it out of their capital for a while until the examiners begin to get upset because their capital base is shrinking. The other thing they can do is raise the price of their product that's raising interest rates and both have been happening in agriculture. So it's important for everyone to realize all the parties what their position is and. Will be better to try to give a little all the way around. Keep the farmers in business keep the farmers

performing on the loans if possible on a scale back basis. Who's had more rational than pushing the farmer to liquidation. That took some careful pencil pushing to figure out what is the most rational alternative. You're scared of any bank. I mean you know I don't want to scare you if you don't have the money to pay it and you pay it immediately. You don't have to worry about somebody coming after you and saying this isn't yours anymore or it's you know it's ours with yours so you better look out or whatever because when someone else owns that with you they've got control to where you pay for it and you don't have to worry about somebody pulling it out from underneath you. Now. There are a lot of worth. It wouldn't be for them I'd have found a job. For them about or in the. Past. And. Hopefully would like to buy this place. You. Know. They're just trying to make a buck nowadays. Stay on top of our bills and everything else ended up signing an agreement were we pretty much turned them. Most of the stuff that's the banking

report bought off the back of your phone operates Perros. I'll never get into the bank again overstand or anything like that. We've cut way back on the camel calls we landed on the road this year and your. The stuff looks real good fertilizer cut back on fertilizer equipment using small equipment again for old stuff. I don't want to carry the debt doesn't interest me at all. The impact of this tendency to cut back on supplies and things small can of course be felt in town where seed and feed dealers are having to adapt to these new farming practices in order to survive. This year there's so much more freedom you know from other years because you've always had that pressure if whoever a family or bank or whoever. But this

year it's just it's a way different feeling lot easier feeling you don't have to worry about anybody else it's us and you know we don't get what we thought we would. It's our problem nobody else's. And I have to answer to anybody else. So that that's nice gives you a good feeling. According to the December 1984 farm in rural life coal and the 1985 farm financial survey both taken by Iowa State University between 11 and 12 percent of Iowa's farmers have a greater than 70 percent debt to asset ratio. These farms the survey points out are the most vulnerable to being forced out of agriculture in the next two to five years. If the surveys proved correct. Between 7 and 19 of Iowa's 113 thousand farms will go out of business every day between now and 1990. For many families economic survival is going to depend upon looking beyond the farm to town for additional work. This drift to part time farming has resulted in some families holding down as many as

three outside jobs just to make ends meet. Pointing to the further dependency of farm and town upon each other a working town part time a welder. And I I've got a part and you were making. Sheet feeders do not go to shop for two or three nights a week. I thought I would probably work until our first child is born and then quit. But when Jeremy was born three years ago I I didn't feel like we could really afford to live without the extra income and that was because of the farming situation then and I figured by the time our second child was born I would definitely quit. But I'm still working and I don't have a choice. A farm person seeking the income from a job in town. The irony of Deb Clausen's job cannot be overlooked. I'm a secretary at the Department of Human Services in Sibley the Osceola County Office of the defiant red handed

programs of food stamps and ADC and the Medicaid program. We've had a lot of funds applying for food stamps in the last few months. Even people are really in need of all of those things they don't have a choice. I seen young people leave our community. In the last. Couple of years. So families people that probably worked in construction or wasn't in the jobs weren't here they went where the jobs were. I know in my heart that I belong here. I really like the town and everything but you know the times are bad enough that I really don't think I'll stick around there school. I'll probably go somewhere. Our family farm has been in the family almost 200 years. And my brother is probably a farmer but I can't see myself doing it. You know there's too many chances too much at stake.

I don't know if it's going to be here when I get married and have kids. I want to go to school and I want to get a good job and I don't want to be anything related just from my experience growing up to my high school years in junior high and stuff. I don't want to be a foreign wife and I say I want to get a job where I know that I'm getting a paycheck and that'll be secure in jobs. The whole thing. You get jobs your economy straight and so your situation gets better and we hope to be able to. Make jobs here in the industry none agriculture. Related jobs so. We had a big. Industry that hit here in 1971 Chase Bank which was a major effort. On the part of the community to land that industry. Since that time. Along with the industries we didn't have

any unemployment problem. In fact. The census shows that the town did can continue to grow. For those communities without diversity in their employment base. They are very heavily dependent upon agriculture in general. They will continue to suffer a reduction of economic scale economic vitality a great deal of emphasis will be placed on trying to achieve that level of diversity in the community and attract entice industry and to give them. The kind of diversification helps them weather the these cycles industry preferably. That does not experience the cycles the same way that agriculture does. There's a lot of competition for industry. And one of the important things we realize however is development from within but we're also trying to sense get ourselves ready to be in the national market. We're trying in every way we can certainly one of the routes we go

is to work with the Iowa Development Commission. They are working around the country to try to bring people to Iowa try to strengthen the Iowa economy. And we want to work as closely with them as we can so we have the opportunity to share and participate with them in anything that they can achieve. We have very definitely a good workforce around here. We have people who are very committed to do their job. Have a strong work ethic take pride in what they do. I want to put in a good day's work for a good day's pay. And for those people who might be looking for a small town or looking for a rural environment one let them know that we're here and we would like develop. Those siblings You may question their future role in the town. There's a spirit with a majority of residents that says we're going to make it. It's a kind of resiliency

that's characteristic of Iowa's people. It simply is not going to disappear off the face of here. We're going to go through some. Tough times and it's going to come back. I think we have to pull together. First of all in other words we pull together we have to support the community and I don't just mean the farmers support the town the town has to support the farmers. I think that it'll take some time yet if we if we got $4 corn tomorrow and $10 beans that would help tremendously. It would save a lot of people. That money would be generated into small communities. And it would really go from there. There would be people put back to work. And it takes all of this to keep on working to keep it going you know keep going. And I think for the. Family. Yes. I'm sure I'm sure I'm going to be. A lot closer. If. Anything. Does come

down to the. And back up again. We know that it's going to be rough for a period of time. But we also know that we're tough out here. And that we're going to find a way to somehow survive. We may not know what that way is yet. But we'll find a way to get through it. Major funding for this program was provided by friends of Iowa Public

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