USA250: Looking Back to 1976

This Week In Ag #173

As we continue to celebrate USA250, America’s semi-quincentennial, it brings back memories of our bicentennial. As we’re seeing now, pageantry and patriotism were aplenty. Even more so back then. The classic movie Rocky was centered around a bicentennial celebration. Spirit of ’76 flags were seen draped across front porches and Main Streets from Maine to California. The US Mint even released commemorative bicentennial quarters.

Like now, the agricultural sector was staring at major crossroads.

The early 1970s were the most prosperous times in the history of US farming. Corn prices had doubled since the beginning of the decade, soybeans had quadrupled. A historic trade deal with the Soviet Union boosted overall farm income eightfold from 1972 to 1973. The USSR purchased one-quarter of the entire USA wheat harvest in 1972. At home, beef consumption rose over 33%. Farmland values were increasing by 20% annually. Grain bins were popping up at breakneck speed on farms across the fruited plain.

But with all this prosperity came a huge challenge: prosperity itself.

Could this economic boom continue? Farmers were now planting fencerow-to-fencerow to meet this growing demand for US grain. They were making huge investments in land, buildings and equipment. Would this unprecedented global demand continue?

Meanwhile, Cold War tensions were starting to shift from the Détente achieved earlier in the decade to more aggressive competition. The energy crisis, brought on by the OPEC oil embargo earlier in the decade, was still an issue, soon to worsen over tensions with, none other than, Iran. High energy costs were, as they still are, a driving factor in steepening inflation, which leads to high interest rates.

A storm was starting to brew across farm country. How farmers and farm policy makers managed these issues would profoundly shape the farm economy for years to come.

During the 1976 Presidential Election, Americans sought change, largely from the lingering fatigue of the Watergate scandal. Ironically, a farmer was elected to the White House. While President Jimmy Carter, a peanut grower from Plains, Georgia, painted the image of a friendly farmer, many of his policy decisions would turn out to be anything but friendly to farmers.