A few miles south of Norway, Illinois along Route 71 is the shocking sight of a banged up aircraft with its nose stuck in the ground. It is not a memorial for a plane crash, but is marked on the sign in front for the “survivors of the Agricultural Crash of the 1980s”.
Farming has always been a difficult way to make a living, and in the 1980s it was especially challenging with a period of high inflation, deflated farm land prices, and the grain embargo to the Soviet Union driving down crop prices. Many farms in the 80s were foreclosed on and equipment auctioned off. In support of the struggling American farmers, musicians Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young organized the Farm Aid benefit concert to raise money for and help family farmers in the United States. The first concert was held in Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois on September 22, 1985 in front of a crowd of 80,000 people.
Thank you for Subscribing to Lost In The States, If you have not subscribed yet, It would mean a lot to me if you did.