Many thought the federal government's 1995 decision to eliminate the "Crow" export rail freight subsidies -- which removed $500 million from the Western Canadian economy virtually overnight -- should have been the trigger. But it didn't happen.

Farmers don't operate the way other business people do. If the market prices are down due to surplus product on the market, they don't shut the factory down until those surpluses clear. They try to make it bigger so they can survive by producing more for less. As a result, there's been a run on farmland in this country as farmers expanded their operations, and farm debt has soared in the process.

It means Canadian farmers are four times more vulnerable to interest rate hikes than their U.S. counterparts. "With a two to three percentage point rate hike, I would expect the rise in land prices to suddenly halt and then slide as the number of overextended farmers forced to sell land starts to rise and the number of farmers able to overpay for land drops," says [George Brinkman]. "In fact, once land prices begin to slide, prospective buyers will have a very good reason not to buy, but to wait and see how much lower prices will go."