The current farm financial climate in Kansas has a lot of the same characteristics of the 1980s farm crisis. Then, as now, net farm income leading up to the farm crisis was near record levels but dropped very quickly.

Net farm income of most Kansas farms has been very strong since 2002. This includes those farms allocating a significant acreage to forage crops. In this analysis, a forage-based farm is a crop farm where a third of the crop acres are used to produce silage, alfalfa and hay.