Agricultural recession

An agricultural recession describes a period of low crop prices and sharply reduced farm incomes.

This tended to have second order effects such as rural flight of people to towns and also had political effects.

A common theme of agricultural recessions, as opposed to famines and crop failures was that they tended to be linked to market conditions, often the opening up of new areas of production and the ability to bring crops into previously markets that had previously protected either by high transport costs (as in the nineteenth century) or by a war blockade (as after the Napoleonic and First World Wars).^[1]