The Drought Of 1988 In One Simple Chart

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Inspired by The Bonddad Blog noodling around with charts, here’s a really simple explanation of what happened in the great drought of 1988, which the current farmbelt drought is being compared to.

The green line is year-over-year cereals/bread inflation. As you can see, by late 88/early ’89, inflation in this category was peaking around 9% (the left-hand y-axis). That was about tripls from the levels pre-and-post-drought.

The black line is Iowa farm income. As you can see from the right-side y-axes it fell by about 50% in 1988.

For the sake of comparison, here’s the same chart over the last 5 years.

As you can see, grain inflation is well less than 5% right now (pre-drought) though it got as high as 12.5% during the great commodities boom just prior to the economic crisis. Meanwhile, Iowa farm income (black line) is right near its highs.

 

SEE ALSO: Dramatic photos of the drought that’s wrecking America’s farmland >

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