Macro Forces Shaping U.S. Agriculture

Abstract and Credits

Macro economic forces shaping our country’s agriculture include worldwide circumstances of income, employment, interest rates, and monetary exchange rates. Domestic credit policies, attitudes toward the federal debt, tax policy, and, finally, legislation directly affecting agriculture are additional forces to which individual farmers and ranchers must bend.

Most influential sources for this section include R.D. Knutson, director of Texas A&M’s Farm Policy pamphlets; J.B. Penson Jr. and D.W. Hughes, Texas A&M; D. Padberg, director of Project 1995 sponsored by the Farm Credit System; and M. Duncan, M. Borowski, M. Drabenstott, and K. Norris’s writings published by the Federal Reserve Bank (Kansas City).