A Thousand Acres

A Thousand Acres primarily takes place in the decade preceding the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. Before the 1970s, farming experienced an uptick in technological advances, leading to greater productivity and profit. As a result, farmers in the 1970s assumed these ideal farming conditions would continue and began borrowing money to keep up with demand. Following a contract to provide the Soviet Union with grain in 1972, “President Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz responded by calling upon American farmers to plant ‘fencerow to fencerow,’ and ‘get big or get out.’ Producers took his words to heart and the race to feed the world was on” (“The Farm Crisis of the 1980s.” Iowa PBS). However, shortly thereafter the “Federal Reserve change[d] their lending policies to hold the line on inflation. The Fed's actions made the cost of borrowing money prohibitive for all Americans. But the effect on farm families and rural bankers was especially severe” (“The Farm Crisis of the 1980s”). As a result, many farmers were unable to keep their family farms and had to sell them to pay off debts. Small farming towns experienced a loss in population and jobs and incidents of death by suicide, intimate partner violence, and substance misuse increased. Regardless ​​of the government’s eventual intervention, the damage to farms was done: “In 1935 the number of farms in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 6.8 million. By 1990 there were only 2.1 million farms” (“The Farm Crisis of the 1980s”).

Much of A Thousand Acres foreshadows this coming crisis. Larry was farming in his prime before the 1970s when opportunities for success and growth were ample. Ty, farming in the 1970s, takes out loans to grow the farm which he is unable to pay back. And when Rose dies in the 1980s, multiple fellow farmers are selling their farms and experiencing mental health conditions. While the novel is a retelling of a Shakespearean tragedy, it also documents a very real American tragedy that forever changed the landscape of rural America.