Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 1985
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 5, No. 4, Fall 1985, pp. 221-35.
Abstract
Beginning in late 1977, the media, television in particular, portrayed as a unique cultural phenomenon an emerging American Agriculture Movement (AAM), a pending farm strike, and a depressed farm economy that had caused this mobilization. Much was indeed unique, especially to the individual farmers and the specific manner in which they were attempting to apply political pressures, but the American Agriculture Movement itself was similar to other organizational attempts that have taken place in rural America.
In the following paper we chronicle the emergence of the American Agriculture Movement as a distinct entity, identify the common features in the emergence of new farm organizations, and examine the conditions of modern society and technology that affect group formation.
AN ORGANIZATION DEVELOPS
Despite impressions left from journal and media accounts that portrayed a grass roots insurgency, the emergence of AAM must be seen in terms of an active leadership directing organizing efforts to a relatively inactive constituency.1 These leaders encouraged activism through a concerted strategy of mobilization with an emphasis on the national issue of a farm strike, the reintroduction of a traditional farm movement ideology, and the skillful use of public relations.2
AAM began in mid-summer· 1977 in Campo, Colorado, as an outgrowth of those enduring cafe conversations typical in all farm communities. However, Bud Bitner, George Bitner, Alvin Jenkins, Darrel Schroeder, Gene Schroeder, Van Stafford, and a few regular listeners talked mostly about a new political spokesman for farm interests during this particular summer.3 They saw a gloomy farm economy beset by both low prices and high costs, by an unresponsive government, and by an array of farm interest groups who were out of touch with real farm needs. Their immediate reaction to the 1977 Farm Bill, a piece of legislation that confirmed incentives for large-scale production without high supports, intensified their frustrations about each of these conditions and precipitated a decision to protest. Encouraged by the reception their ideas found in their own community, these locally respected larger-scale farmers and farmrelated businessmen proceeded to develop an organization based on rallies and protests against the political system.4
They would prompt and assist farmers throughout the country to organize as local groups, much along the lines of Farm Bureau county chapters, but without Bureau-related emphasis on nonpolitical services. AAM locals would be pockets of farmer interaction and discussion that would inspire political activism instead of emphasizing individual income.5 The local organizations would Jom in statewide and, finally, national demonstrations of movement support. Farmers, the initial organizers believed, were widely concerned about their weakened economic status but politically lethargic because they lacked inspired leadership.
Comments
Copyright 1985 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln