Review of American Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly: The Political Economy of Grain Belt Farming, 1953-1980 by Jon Lauck

Authors

John Mark Hansen, University of Chicago

Date of this Version

Spring 2002

Comments

Published in Great Plains Research 12:1 (Spring 2002). Copyright © 2002 Center for Great Plains Studies.

Abstract

Through the years, nothing has marked agrarian political discourse on the Great Plains quite as much as the charge of monopoly. Farmers' demands for protection from the firms that purchased their product animated the Populist and Progressive movements in the region and contributed to the regulation of business practices in the grain trades and packing industry. Farmers' search for greater control over their own prices culminated in policies promoting agricultural producer cooperatives during Normalcy and regulating agricultural production during the New Deal.