ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the demographic characteristics of those being impacted by the crisis and the social and community-level impacts of the crisis. It explores the characteristics of two sets of persons being impacted by the crisis—producers and residents in agriculturally dependent rural communities, and also examines that groups that have been directly or indirectly impacted by the crisis. The chapter shows that those being most directly impacted by the crisis are producers and business operators in early career stages who entered agriculture or business in the 1970s. Data comparing the perceptions of producers and other rural residents and providing comparisons among persons who have been impacted to different degrees by the farm crisis have seldom been available. In describing the characteristics of those being affected by financial stress, the chapter also examines data from several different data sets. In like manner, those experiencing higher levels of financial stress were likely to have begun farming during the 1970s.
