12/25/2025
In 1983, farmers were getting $12.93 per hundredweight of milk, and everyone agreed things were tight. Tight enough that people still talk about the farm crisis of the 80s with a certain tone in their voice. Tight enough that families sold cows, sold land, sold dreams, and hoped their kids might have an easier go of it someday.
Fast forward to now.
We’re getting $12.71 per hundredweight.
Read that again slowly.
Not adjusted for inflation. Not “equivalent buying power.” Actual dollars. Forty-plus years later. Lower than what we were paid when tractors didn’t have touch screens and a phone call involved a cord stretched across the kitchen wall.
And here’s where it gets wild. Because while the milk price basically stood still…everything else sprinted.
Diesel in the early 80s was well under a dollar a gallon. Today, we’re thrilled if it’s under four. Every feeding, every field pass, every load hauled costs exponentially more just to move equipment from point A to point B.
Hay back then was often under a hundred dollars a ton. Today? A hundred forty if you’re lucky. Much more if quality actually matters. Corn, protein, minerals, freight…all climbing. Always climbing. Never waiting for milk to catch up.
And equipment. Oh equipment.
In the 80s, you could buy a brand-new tractor for the price of a nice pickup today. Now? A modern tractor can cost half a million dollars or more. Before interest. Before repairs. Before the computer throws a code and decides you’re done for the day. Same job. Same dirt. Same cows. Just a price tag that looks like it belongs to a small house.
And then there’s land.
In the early 1980s, farmland in many parts of the country sold for a few thousand dollars an acre. Sometimes less. It was still a stretch, but it was attainable. A young farmer could, with enough grit and a patient banker, imagine buying ground.
Today? That same acre can cost ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars or more. In some places, far more than that. Land didn’t just get more expensive. It became a barrier. Something you inherit, or lease, or give up on owning altogether. And yet it’s still taxed, still insured, still expected to cash-flow on a milk price that hasn’t moved.
So when people ask why farming feels so fragile, this is why.
We are being paid nearly the same for milk as we were in 1983, while paying 1983 would-have-fainted prices for fuel, feed, equipment, repairs, and land. The math does not pencil out. It hasn’t for a long time. What keeps farms alive isn’t margin. It’s grit. It’s creativity. It’s families patching things together and saying, “We’ll make it work,” one more year.
The farm crisis didn’t disappear. It just stopped making headlines.
It shows up quietly now. In fewer dairies. Older equipment kept alive with prayer and baling wire. Ground that gets farmed but never owned by the people caring for it. Kids who love the farm but aren’t sure it loves them back. People who work seven days a week producing food while being told food should be cheaper.
And yet…we’re still here.
Not because it’s easy.
Not because it’s profitable.
But because someone before us milked cows at $12.93 and believed the land and the animals were worth holding onto. And we’re trying to do the same at $12.71.
Same job.
Same heart.
Very different bill at the end of the month.
That’s farming.
