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International trade doubled during 1970s. Earlier in the decade President Nixon had lowered the dollar, but along with bad weather agriculture nations increased the demands for American agricultural exports. -
The Agriculture Act of 1970 was placed into law by President Nixon on November 30th after 16 months of making its way through the legislative branch. -
Economic opportunities from the boom of 1970s pushed farmers to take advantage of growing exports. Since easy credit helped finance the expansion, many farmers took on a lot of debt. -
President Ronald Reagan signed the 1981 Farm Bill to help the Americans farmers compete with the European farmers again. But even with the government help farm prices, income, and land values continued to decline. This made it very difficult for farmers to pay their debts. -
Many farmers started to be forced out of business, this created growing concerns about the effect of agriculture on the environment. This brought about a merger of crop support payments and resource conservation in the 1985 Farm Bill. As a result of the new Farm Bill the department of agriculture started the Conservation Reserve Program to pay landowners to protect environmentally sensitive cropland. -
Expanding trade was seen as the essential solution to the ending of the agriculture crisis. -
The Farm Crisis of 1980s led more farmers away from tradition crop production and towards growing alternative or high value crops that were coming popular with consumers. Farmers also began to take a different approach to agriculture called sustainable agriculture, or a system of farming that maintained its productivity and usefulness for people forever. -
In the 1990s farm management became increasingly important. Since the cost of inputs rose sharply in the 1980s. Farmers needed to become better business managers and computer users to succeed. USDA scientists started to help farmers reduce their production costs and increase their efficiency.