Unsettling Images (1988)

This edition of Southern Exposure draws heavily on the farm advocacy work of the Rural Advancement Fund, especially a photographic exhibition called "Manifest Destiny" and a citizens forum on agricultural issues held in honor of the organization's 50th anniversary. Like the settling of America through the doctrine of manifest destiny, the unsettling of the family farm is neither accident nor act of God. It is the result of purposeful policies that favor food wholesalers, cotton brokers, grain merchants, and financial middlemen over the individual producer.

Farmers of late have won significant credit relief measures that, if implemented, could ease their immediate financial burdens. But the Farm Crisis, as discovered and now lost by the mainstream media, is far from over. Even the Economic Research Section (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a fountain of cheery news for high-tech farming, admitted in late 1987 that "approximately 100,000 commercial-size farms [those with sales of $40,000 or more] could face potential losses of an estimated $6.3 billion" in the next year.