When farm commodity prices are at parity the entire economy prospers with full employment and living wages, if not then debt displaces income creating economic instability.
One of the best kept secrets about our economy is that it is based on agriculture production. Agriculture creates a continuous flow of new wealth from the soil, the raw material energy that all human production requires. Agriculture supplies 70% of the raw materials for production in our economy. A full 2/3 of investment income comes from agricultural raw materials, the rest from gross mineral production, mining etc. Agriculture is the primary source of new wealth. This is not conjecture, the evidence is recorded in the financial records of the national economy. Benjamin Franklin noted in Positions to be Examined Concerning National Wealth April 4 1769 that there are 3 ways a nation can obtain wealth;
1. By War, taking wealth by force.
2. By trade, which to be profitable requires cheating.
3. By Agriculture, through which we plant seed and create new wealth as if by a miracle.
It should be obvious that nature provides the raw materials of wealth if one thinks about it, but few do. The focus is almost always on the other 1/3 of the economy diminishing attention on the primary wealth generator. The financial sector of the economy has given…