ABSTRACT
Policy approaches, concentrating as they do on prices and income guarantees and ignoring modes of increasing equity financing; seem to have exacerbated the problem rather than to have moved our economic institutions toward any kind of solution. A policy which makes the economic system more efficient ads to the productivity of society and is indeed beneficial. The chapter proposes a new policy to facilitate bringing equity into the farm sector from outside sources and to provide additional liquidity in the market for farm real estate. As proponents of doing nothing about farm policy claim, a market oriented policy which significantly reduced the level of price supports would increase farmers' sense of farm business risk. Public outcries for moratoriums on farm foreclosures, widespread during the Great Depression, are popular reactions to the current farm financial crisis.
