Darn Yahoo message boards. Here is part 3.

Gene Gourley, who raises 60,000 hogs every year on his farm in Webster City, Iowa, is losing as much as $30 on each hog he sells. He said Thursday that he is rethinking plans to buy a trailer for hauling feed to his livestock. "With hogs losing so much money, you're basically burning up anything you could have saved," said Mr. Gourley. "You just don't have the equity to go buy new upgrades."

Before the recession, hog farmers enjoyed several years of good business in part because exports were booming to countries such as China. When the recession hit, restaurants cut orders for pork and foreign demand cooled. Pork exports in June were 36% lower than June 2008, according to USDA figures.

The decline in commodity prices also has begun to depress the value of U.S. farmland for the first time in two decades. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said in a report it issued Thursday that the price of good quality farmland in Iowa and Michigan was 5% lower on July 1 than it was on the same 2008 date.

Falling land prices are making it harder for farmers to borrow because land is their biggest source of collateral. "No question that specific industries are burning through working capital very quickly," said Bill York, chief executive of AgriBank FCB, St. Paul, Minn. "Pork and dairy are of particular concern."

Farmers, many of whom already receive federal subsidies, are seeking more help. Last month, the Obama administration said it will put an additional $243 million into the pockets of dairy farmers by temporarily raising the price the government pays for products such as cheese under its long-running dairy-price support program. Midwest governors are asking Washington to buy more pork for government nutrition programs in hopes that would raise hog prices.

The requests are likely to agitate critics of agricultural aid, who argue, among other things, that the average farmer is much wealthier than the typical U.S. household, and that U.S. subsidies put farmers in poor nations at a competitive disadvantage.