Review of \u3ci\u3e Troubled Fields: Men, Emotions, and the Crisis in American Farming\u3c/i\u3e By Eric Ramirez-Ferrero

Is the family farm an anachronism, to be replaced, sooner or later, by larger and more efficient industrial modes of agriculture? This question achieved special prominence during the farm crisis in the 1980s, when thousands of farmers lost their land to foreclosure. Since then the issue has largely been forgotten, except in northwestern Oklahoma, the site of Troubled Fields, where the decline of family farming can be measured in continuing population loss, the breakdown of families, and increased risk of suicide