Edward Lotterman

U.S. agriculture is on the brink of a financial shakeout that will be the worse since the farm crisis of the 1980s. This is largely ignored, even by many farmers, but the monster won’t stay under the table much longer.

The problem is that farmland prices have risen, in steps, to unsustainable levels just as farm commodity prices are set to fall because of a U.S.-initiated trade war against the rest of the world.

The Russia-Ukraine war’s adjustment from an acute problem to a chronic one also pushed prices down. So has the dramatic growth of corn production in competitor Brazil along with continued growth in that country’s soybean output.

The rise in land prices initially was due to two factors: First, values started going up in 2005 in response to a “global commodity price super-cycle” driven by exports to a booming China. This product price boom continued to about 2012. Second, ultra-low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve after the 2008 real estate debacle further boosted cropland prices even as commodity prices ebbed back toward earlier trend levels.

Grain and oilseed prices did retract a bit as China reacted to Trump’s tariffs on its exports after 2017. But the Fed turbocharging money growth in response to COVID flooded the farm economy with readily available land and operating loans at low rates. The first Trump administration also had laid out tens of billions in subsidies to crop producers to compensate them for any losses due to trade skirmishes. Much subsequent research shows these payments “overcompensated” farmers. The payments they got were greater than their losses in the market. That further motivated bidding on land.

Then, on top of all these boom-causing factors, Vladimir Putin unleashed his “special military operation” on Ukraine in February 2022. It soon became the worst European war in 80 years. Both Russia and Ukraine are major crop producers and exporters. Farm shipments from both must cross the Black Sea as must phosphate fertilizer exports from Russia that are vital, for example, for growing crops on the most common soil types in Brazil and elsewhere.

This had multiple impacts all happening at once. Commodity prices had their fastest and highest spike in decades. Field crop farming became frenzied. Rental rates rose. Farmers paid “liquidated damages” to the USDA to revoke Conservation Reserve Program contracts freeing millions in additional crop acres. Sales prices for the small numbers of farms put on sale spiked. Farmers snapped up new combines and tractors that had sat idle on dealer lots five years earlier.

But now, not only is all that drawing to a close, but a financial chasm looms. Interest rates are higher than in 2022. Long-term ones are more likely to rise than fall as bond markets react to ever-increasing U.S. deficits. Rather than being in a trade war with one importing country, we are now at war with the whole world. Our competitive nations now gleefully scramble for our usual customers. And the war in Ukraine shows no sign of ending.

What in economics helps us understand all of this?

Let’s go back to the early 19th century with the fundamental insights of David Ricardo, the most important classical economist after Adam Smith. His thoughts still form the basis of all trade theory and most finance.

Ricardo defined the relationship between the annual net income from an investment asset, the interest rate, and the value of that asset. It’s a simple equation: the annual income divided by the interest rate equals the value of the asset.

Say you get $100 in net rent from an acre of land and the interest rate is 4%, then $100 divided by .04 gives a value of $2,500 for the acre. The same thing is true for a financial asset like a bond you can own in perpetuity, as was common in the early 1800s. The lower the interest rate, the greater the market value from a given annual income. That is the primary reason why land prices rose as the Fed drove interest rates down 15 years ago. But inversely, it also means that if rates now rise, land prices will fall. With the federal budget deficit and thus the national debt set to rise with votes in Congress this week, market forces will force long-term interest rates, like those on farm mortgages, even higher.

A second insight comes from Julius Nyerere, the Tanzanian schoolteacher and president who led his country to independence from the United Kingdom. In the 1950s, he and leftist economists argued that the prices of primary products — grains, metals, fuels and timber — inevitably fell relative to the prices of manufactured products like tractors or computers. This argument was disputed in the 1950s and still is. But it seems to be true for U.S. farm products.

In November 1971, my first harvest after getting out of the Army, we sold corn out of the field to a neighbor at 97 cents a bushel, the price at the local elevator. One can get $4.02 a bushel from the same grain dealer today. Yet adjusted by the Consumer Price Index over the same period, 97 cents in November 1971 would equal $7.48 today. Yes, for a few fevered months in late 2021, the inflation-adjusted corn price had hit $7.50, topping a half century earlier. But if you plot inflation-adjusted corn prices from 1925 to 2025, the trend is clearly downward.

I also remember my cousin enthusiastically telling me the milk price had hit $13 per hundred pounds for the first time. It is $18.42 for Minnesota-Wisconsin this week. But my cousin died in 1986. Adjusted for inflation, $13 forty years ago would be about $41 now, over twice what the current price is.

Of course, productivity has risen both in crops and livestock. An hour of labor produces much more milk or corn than decades ago. But producers should be careful not to respond to short-term price spikes from exogenous shocks like war by locking in the long-term fixed costs of expensive land.

Many are not cautious. That leads to the crunch we see forming.

An excellent farm in Rock County, the southwestern-most in our state, recently sold for $14,000 an acre. The price had been $105 an acre in 1940 and about $750 in 1970. USDA lists the current interest rate on farm mortgages at 5.875%. So the annual interest cost per acre on this farm will be $822.50 per acre. The average corn yield for Rock County has hit 202 bushels per acre. One can contract to sell at a local elevator this November for $3.98 a bushel or $803.96 an acre. So a good crop this year won’t even pay the interest due, much less seed, fertilizer, diesel fuel, labor or other variable costs. See the math? Thus deep problems loom, but need their own explanation.

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St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.

By JIM VERTUNO, JULIO CORTEZ and JOHN SEEWER

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha says that 11 campers and a camp counselor are still missing after powerful floods inundated central Texas.

Dozens of people have been killed since raging floodwaters slammed a portion of central Texas starting Friday.

The death toll from flash floods rose to nearly 70 on Sunday after searchers found more more bodies in the hardest-hit Kerr County. The victims include children who were camping along the Guadalupe River banks.

Officials have said they will not stop searching until every person is found.

Most of the deaths coming in Kerr County in the state’s Hill Country. Besides the 59 dead in Kerr County — 38 adults and 21 children — additional deaths were reported in Travis, Burnet and Kendall counties.

Rescuers dealt with broken trees, overturned cars and muck-filled debris in a difficult task to find survivors. Authorities still have not said how many people were missing beyond the children from Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp where most of the dead were recovered.

With each passing hour, the outlook became more bleak. Volunteers and some families of the missing who drove to the disaster zone began searching the riverbanks despite being asked not to do so.

Authorities faced growing questions about whether enough warnings were issued in area long vulnerable to flooding and whether enough preparations were made.

The destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet (8 meters) on the river in only 45 minutes before daybreak Friday, washing away homes and vehicles. The danger was not over as flash flood watches remained in effect and more rain fell in central Texas on Sunday.

Searchers used helicopters, boats and drones to look for victims and to rescue people stranded in trees and from camps isolated by washed-out roads. Officials said more than 850 people were rescued in the first 36 hours.

A day of prayers in Texas

Gov. Greg Abbott vowed that authorities will work around the clock and said new areas were being searched as the water receded. He declared Sunday a day of prayer for the state.

“I urge every Texan to join me in prayer this Sunday — for the lives lost, for those still missing, for the recovery of our communities, and for the safety of those on the front lines,” he said in a statement.

In Rome, Pope Leo XIV offered special prayers for those touched by the disaster. History’s first American pope spoke in English at the end of his Sunday noon blessing, “I would like to express sincere condolences to all the families who have lost loved ones, in particular their daughters who were in summer camp, in the disaster caused by the flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas in the United States. We pray for them.”

The hills along the Guadalupe River are dotted with century-old youth camps and campgrounds where generations of families have come to swim and enjoy the outdoors. The area is especially popular around the Independence Day holiday, making it more difficult to know how many are missing.

“We don’t even want to begin to estimate at this time,” Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said on Saturday.

Harrowing escapes from floodwaters

Survivors shared terrifying stories of being swept away and clinging to trees as rampaging floodwaters carried trees and cars past them. Others fled to attics inside their homes, praying the water wouldn’t reach them.

At Camp Mystic, a cabin full of girls held onto a rope strung by rescuers as they walked across a bridge with water whipping around their legs.

Among those confirmed dead were an 8-year-old girl from Mountain Brook, Alabama, who was at Camp Mystic, and the director of another camp up the road.

Locals know the area as “ flash flood alley” but the flooding in the middle of the night caught many campers and residents by surprise even though there were warnings.

Warnings came before the disaster

The National Weather Service on Thursday advised of potential flooding and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies — a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.

At the Mo-Ranch Camp in the community of Hunt, officials had been monitoring the weather and opted to move several hundred campers and attendees at a church youth conference to higher ground. At nearby Camps Rio Vista and Sierra Vista, organizers also had mentioned on social media that they were watching the weather the day before ending their second summer session Thursday.

Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, whose district includes the ravaged area, acknowledged that there would be second-guessing and finger-pointing as people look for someone to blame.

___

Cortez reported from Hunt, Texas, and Seewer from Toledo, Ohio. Associated Press writers Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed.

SELIGMAN, Arizona — They came suddenly and in numbers, cars and trucks weighed down with their owners’ worldly possessions. Angel Delgadillo was a boy when those hundreds of thousands of Dust Bowl refugees drove through his tiny hometown on Route 66, heading for California and the promise of work on farms so fertile, it was said, that fruit fell from the trees.

He and his friends used to run to a nearby building at night and wait for the passing vehicles’ headlights to cast their shadows on the white stucco wall. They danced and watched their shadows change as the cars neared.

“And as a car left,” he remembered, “our shadows went with them.”

Delgadillo’s entire life, all 98 years, has played out along what John Steinbeck called “the mother road, the road of flight.” He and his eight siblings grew up on the route; he went to barber college in the Route 66 town of Pasadena, California, and then apprenticed for two years at a barber shop in another route town 43 miles east of his home — Williams, Arizona — before returning to Seligman to run his parents’ pool hall and barbershop.

As Route 66 aficionados look to the historic roadway’s 100th anniversary next year, most agree there would probably not be a centennial to celebrate if not for Delgadillo.

“They’re right,” he said with a smile, sitting in his barbershop chair on a Friday in June.

Follow our road trip: Route 66, ‘The Main Street of America,’ turns 100

An estimated 9,000 cars once passed through Seligman every 24 hours, Delgadillo said, until Interstate 40 bypassed it and other towns along Arizona’s Route 66 corridor. The time, he recalled, was around 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 22, 1978.

“When you lose something so important, your livelihood, how can you forget that moment?” he said. “Listen to me: We knew we were gonna get bypassed, but we did not know how devastating it was going to be. The world just forgot about us. County officials didn’t know about us. State officials, highway officials, the feds — it was like they told us, Angel, if you can swim out of it, swim out of it. If you can’t, drown.”

Businesses shuttered. People left. Delgadillo, his wife Vilma and four children considered doing the same.

Seligman was heading to its grave.

“It was a very, very sad moment,” he said. “First, it was so sad. Then I got so angry.”

Then he did something about it.

Enlisting the help of his older brother Juan, who built the Seligman institution Delgadillo’s Snow Cap, and others, he formed the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona in February 1987. They wrote letters to state highway officials telling them to step in and preserve the route. At first, they were ignored.

“But, you know what,” he said, “those big boys in Phoenix didn’t know who they were up against.”

By November that same year, the state’s transportation department designated 83 miles of Route 66, from Seligman west to Kingman, as a historic road. Delgadillo’s association kept up its pressure, eventually convincing the state to add more miles.

Today, the entire expanse is recognized by the state as a historic road, and Arizona boasts the longest remaining stretch of uninterrupted Route 66 in the country, starting at the California border and ending nearly 160 miles east near Ash Fork.

“To fight the government, you lose. Go to city hall and try to convince them, you lose,” Delgadillo said. “We had to fight our state government and we succeeded. We the people.”

Delgadillo soon fielded phone calls from would-be preservationists in the other seven states the route traverses. They wanted to know how they could protect their portions of the road.

Form your association, he told them.

Delgadillo’s efforts have earned Seligman the title of the “birthplace of historic Route 66,” and Delgadillo, the “guardian angel of Route 66.” He retired from cutting hair a few years ago; the barbershop inside the Route 66 gift shop that bears his and his wife Vilma’s names is now something of a shrine to his and his family’s legacy.

Route 66 travelers from all over the world make a pilgrimage to Seligman to see him. More often than not these days, they see a life-sized cardboard cutout of his likeness instead. When he does stop in, like on that Friday in June, he’s quickly surrounded by people wanting to have their pictures taken with him.

“It’s as though they have known me forever,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s overwhelming. They’re so thankful. It is mind boggling.”

In retirement, he continues to help celebrate his beloved town and route. He started building birdhouses constructed using 100-year-old lumber from his grandparents’ Seligman restaurant that once stood on Route 66 before it was torn down.

Each birdhouse is numbered. Last week, he finished number 268. He has enough wood for another 30.

They sell for $100.66 at the gift shop. The proceeds are being donated to help Seligman construct Route 66 welcome signs at either end of town ahead of next year’s centennial.

Read the sixth dispatch, An Albuquerque neighborhood in peril, here >>>

The journey along Route 66 map to Seligman, Arizona, June 6, 2025.

By JESSICA DAMIANO, Associated Press

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle grew tomatoes in plastic buckets lined up like soldiers on the cement patio in their tiny Queens, New York, backyard.

They also grew dozens of vegetables in their 10-by-10 foot patch of soil and installed a pergola they made from green metal fence posts above a picnic table. While it provided much-needed shade, it more importantly supported grapevines that produced enough fruit for their annual homemade vintage.

Space — or the lack of it — doesn’t have to stand between you and a fruitful garden. You just have to be creative.

Start by looking up

Vertical space is a horizontally challenged gardener’s best friend.

This June 21, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows squash, beans and tomatoes growing vertically in a space-saving Long Island, N.Y. garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

String up a trellis, hang baskets or attach planters to a fence or wall. You might be surprised at how much you can grow when you consider the third dimension. Vines, herbs and even strawberries are content climbers or danglers.

Create visual interest by strategically grouping containers in clusters of odd numbers rather than lining them up in straight rows or placing them all separately. Try staggering their heights by perching them on decorative pedestals, overturned crates or stone slabs to draw the eye up and out.

This July 29, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows a squash plant growing vertically on a trellis on Long Island, N.Y. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Compact and colorful crops

Of course, size matters. If your space is limited, seek out compact or dwarf varieties of your favorite plants. They’ve been bred to thrive in tight spaces, and many are prolific producers of flowers, fruits or vegetables. These days, it’s easy to grow roses, blueberries, tomatoes, peppers — even apple and fig trees — in containers.

Tall garlic provides a lush backdrop for this small Long Island, N.Y., flower bed on June 19, 2025. Growing herbs, fruit and vegetables in flower beds is a great way to utilize limited space in the garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

And don’t sleep on plants that multitask as both beautiful ornamentals and nutritious crops. I’ve grown amaranth, cherry tomatoes and rainbow chard in my perennial beds. Other edibles with attractive foliage or flowers like chives, fancy lettuces and sage would be equally at home among my coneflowers, zinnias and roses. And sweet potatoes make a nice ground cover or trailing vine in a mixed container.

Make the most of a single vegetable bed

If you have a small, designated bed for vegetables, you can maximize your yield by planting a succession of crops throughout the season. Start by planting early-maturing plants like peas, beets, kale and lettuces. Then, after harvesting, replace them with warm-season crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, summer squash and beans. As they fade and fall approaches, use the space for another round of cool-season plants.

This July 3, 2024, image provided by Jessica Damiano shows squash, beans and tomatoes growing vertically in a space-saving Long Island, N.Y. garden. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Even a narrow strip or window box can feel lush if you plant it in layers. Place tall, upright plants in the back, midsized growers in the middle, and low bloomers in front to create visual depth that can help transform even a balcony or front stoop into your own personal nature retreat.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.