SACRAMENTO -- As a bankruptcy attorney representing creditors, Ronald H. Sargis had a rule of thumb about what collateral he'd accept as payment of debts.
"Please, not something we have to feed," said Sargis, now the chief bankruptcy judge for the U.S. Eastern District of California.
This is a reference to the waves of agricultural bankruptcies that began hitting in the 1980s. But ther... (continued)