Farmers' and farm workers' movements

the long version

In this comprehensive overview of the fascinating and rich history of the struggles of farmers and farm workers, Patrick H. Mooney and Theo J. Majka highlight the drama of certain events and the courage and charisma of the individuals who have participated in these movements. The section on farmer movements begins with a look at the violent farmer protests from the colonial period up to the Civil War and then moves on to farmer alliances with labor that were common between 1860 and the farm depression of the 1920s; the institutionalization of the cooperative movement of the early twentieth century; the creation of the Farm Bureau and its consequences for farmers; the cooperatives' initiation of lobbying to combat the power of agribusiness in Washington; the emergence of the National Farmers' Organization as a protest and collective bargaining movement in the 1950s and 1960s; the American Agriculture Movement's campaigns for a "farm strike" and production control in the late 1970s and the 1980s; and the new agrarian social movements emerging from the farm crisis of the 1980s.