“He farmed through the eighties,” was the phrase used to describe my father-in-law’s career. Navigating severe ups and downs, multiple neighbors going under, depressing outlooks, extremely low crop prices, and deteriorating land values, my father-in-law got the family dairy farm through the toughest farming decade in recent memory. Thirty years later, American agriculture may be on the verge of another farm bust.

Bystanders may get the feeling that farmers and aggies are playing the role of Chicken Little. For decades, fear mongering has made headlines, repeating concerns of aging farmers, disappearing farmland, low crop prices, rising input costs, climate change, droughts, farm bankruptcy, and regulatory pressure.

I know first-hand that agriculture is a business and farm families will experience these cycles. As newlyweds, my husband and I had big plans for our farm. We rented our 200 acres of dryland wheat from family and set out on our plan to expand our tiny operation as we worked full-time.

For three years, we farmed our small crop and tried to buy or rent a few more acres to so we could make a living. We were fortunate – and unfortunate – to farm during the highest wheat prices on record. The 2012 drought tightened the supply and escalated all crop prices. For many this was their boom – for us this was our exit ticket. Land prices became unaffordable and unavailable. Everybody wanted to farm and as recent college graduates we did not have a big enough checkbook to compete with more established investors and farmers to expand our operation.

We moved on and into the city, still working in agriculture, but no longer on the farm as we had planned. We were victims of circumstance and in every boom and bust cycle there are people on both sides.

On February 13, 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasted that American farm incomes will drop by 9% in the coming year. As the Wall Street Journal noted, this is fourth year of the steepest slide since the Great Depression. However, the doomsday scenario is shortsighted. Four years ago, American farmers experienced record farm incomes for three years previous. It was the boom of the century and those that were cautious and frugal will likely survive the current downturn.

In Washington state, our agriculture story is more hopeful than the rest of the nation. The most recent data indicates that Washington ranks sixth in net farm income. Our farms are more profitable and our crop diversity that relies on more than one product provides resiliency to our market place. Also, on a national level our farmland values are holding better than they did in the 80s and chances of a similar dip are unlikely.

There are cases this year in Washington of family farms going out of business, especially in wheat country. Random weather patterns, outdated wheat-quality tests, and challenging trade policies discounted wheat prices to Great Depression levels.

Multiple experts say there will be many of these family farms going out of business this year. This is a sad but inevitable fact of farming through “booms” and “busts.” However, there are many policy choices Washington state and the nation are making that focus on the Chicken Little scenarios instead of the actual causes of farming instability.

Many of our policy choices promote the preservation of dysfunctional farms, like subsidies which favor large farms and excessive regulations which disproportionately target smaller farmers.

Smoothing access to trade markets, removing farm support payments which favor large farms, decreasing reliance on “conservation” programs which deter retiring farmers from selling their land to beginning operators, and removing ineffective and redundant policies will make it more affordable and easier for the American farmer to survive our newest “bust.”