The+Farmers+Grievances

J.R.C.- In the article titled “The Farmers’ Grievances”, the overproduction of crops is portrayed to be the main source of many detrimental problems during the times of 1870-1897. Though farmers during this time could be viewed as unintelligent, truth is found in the fact that they were simply undereducated. Because this is true, most farmers during this time lacked economic understanding, making the idea of the lowering market value of crops hard to comprehend for the majority of said farmers. As prices dropped, farmers tended to produce much more, so that when they sold their crops, they maintained the previous amount of money they made when selling their crops prior to the lowered value. This overproduction of crop further promoted the overall decrease in the market value of many different crop values, but farmers lacked an understanding of this negative pattern. The overproduction of crops also led to the practice of agriculture being carried at a loss of money. The scale of prices dropped so low, to the point where farmers began to pay over what was made in profit in supplemental costs to cultivate and harvest the crop being produced. This problem was directly rooted to overproduction, because as more acres of land were being tilled to meet the lowered values for crops, costs to maintain harvest levels increased immensely, surpassing the amount of money made for the product sold. The overproduction of food also led to the increase of population, rapidly increasing the speed in which overproduction occurred. This was a major problem, because the speed at which food was being produced during this time exceeded the speed at which the population grew. Acting as the reason for the decrease in prices of crops, the instability of farming as a profitable occupation, and the increase in population, overproduction of crops could be viewed as a factor in beginning a nationwide agricultural depression. nothing more than a summary checked