As Iowa farmers begin to plant seeds for their 2016 corn and soybean crops, signals of financial and emotional stress are clearly starting to emerge in the countryside, according to officials at Iowa State University’s (ISU) Extension and Outreach service.

Lenders, mediation services and farmer hotlines are all seeing an uptick in calls and visits from farmers who are starting to feel pressure from low commodity prices and input costs that, in many areas, have remained stubbornly high. That financial and emotional stress, they said, is compounded by the fact that many in Iowa agriculture today have little or no first-hand experience of a period of severe financial pressure, like the...