Iowa Stops Hunger Podcast: 5 takeaways about food insecurity during the 1980s Iowa farm crisis

by LISA ROSSI

On the latest episode of the Iowa Stops Hunger Podcast, Iowa State University distinguished professor and historian Pamela Riney-Kehrberg talked with dsm magazine editor Michael Morain about the farm crisis of the 1980s and how it brought a food insecurity crisis upon farmers.

The farm crisis of the 1980s was rooted in the 1970s.

Production ramped up in the 1970s, Riney-Kehrberg said, and a lot of farmers took on debt. Interest rates were very low and inflation was very high, she said.

“Everybody tells them, go ahead and make the investments,” she said. “And that would have been OK if the situation had stayed as it was, but it doesn’t. Probably the most important thing that doesn’t stay as it was is interest rates. These farmers had adjustable rate mortgages, and they were not prepared for interest rates to go as high as 24% at times, and those interest rates mean that it is more economically lucrative to put your money into a CD or a money market than to buy land.”

In every county in Iowa, the value of land fell between 60% and 70% by 1985, she said. 

“That’s in the course of four years, because land values peaked in 1981 and then they have this incredible fall-off, which means that all of these farmers who have borrowed money against their land are upside down on their loans,” she said. “And so there is a wave of foreclosures that begins in the early 1980s and continues throughout the decade.”

There was an ‘enormous’ food crisis among farmers in small towns.

“The farm crisis really puzzled people, because they thought, ‘OK, farmers are in trouble,’” Riney-Kehrberg said. “Farmers have pigs. Farmers have gardens, farmers can feed themselves. What they didn’t realize was that agriculture had changed. Many farmers just produced for the market, and many of them had loans against those pigs, and so they couldn’t kill them … and there was no time for a garden. I was really stunned. I probably shouldn’t have been but I was really stunned by the fact that there’s this enormous food crisis, food insecurity, that goes with the farm crisis, and it’s happening in small towns.”

Advocates organized food stamp drives to encourage farmers to accept help.

One problem was that many farmers were too proud and too embarrassed to take food stamps, Riney-Kehrberg said.

The Iowa Farm Unity Coalition, a coalition of left-leaning agricultural organizations, began what they called Food Stamp Drives, where they asked everybody in the community to stand in line, whether they thought they needed food stamps or not, she said. 

“They want everybody to stand in line to sign up for food stamps, so that the people who really need them will not feel ashamed,” she said. “And they managed to get a fair number of Iowa farmers enrolled in the food stamp program, but nowhere near as many as probably needed it, because there is this really big barrier of pride in there that’s keeping people from signing up.”

Food banks started in the 1980s across the state of Iowa.

“Another thing that happened during the 1980s that is entirely voluntary is the creation of food banks all across this state,” she said. ”There were a few in urban areas, but all of the small town food banks are the creation of the 1980s, often the creation of a local minister who decided that something had to happen, or a local women’s group that decided people had to be fed, and they open up in closets in churches, in empty buildings and downtowns. Those programs largely date back to the 1980s and again, it can be difficult getting people to make use of those resources, but they become much more open about the help they’re offering.”

Public service announcements encouraged people to feed their families.

“I found … a public service announcement that was done in the mid-1980s by three of our politicians, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, Sen. Tom Harkin and Sen. Chuck Grassley. Now these three people represent quite a spectrum politically, but they came together to say, ‘You have to feed your families, and you should not be ashamed about what you have to do to feed your families,’” she said. “You should think of food pantries as part of the long Iowa history of neighbors helping neighbors. You’ve given in the past. You should not be ashamed of taking now when you need it. And I have a hard time imagining a similar public service announcement being made today, but it was amazing to find that … and to realize that these people who didn’t agree about everything could agree that Iowans needed to take care of themselves and their families, and that that was the most important thing, and that pride was not the most important thing.