Report Outline
Special Focus
Introduction
The farm economy is improving, but the biggest farms are still doing the best financially. The future looks bleak for America's “family farms.” Should the government come to the rescue, or is it finally time to bury the “agrarian myth” and treat farming like the business it is?
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Overview
Jessica Lange choked back tear. “It is heartbreaking to witness their anguish as they watch their lives being stripped away,” she said. The star of the 1984 movie “Country” was talking about troubled American farmers, but she was not emoting on screen. Lange, together with Jane Fonda and Sissy Spacek, was testifying in May 1985 before the House Democratic Caucus Task Force on Agriculture. The actresses were there, Fonda explained, “to underscore the gravity of the [farm] crisis.”
While this pseudo-event was easy for critics to deride and dismiss, it actually was a perfect symbol for the plight of America's family farms, which also involves a confusing blend of the real and the imaginary. |
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