Abstract
Two major episodes of farm protest have occurred in the past decade. In each case, protesting farmers have chosen to create new farm organizations rather than express their grievances through one of many existing farm interest groups. The result has been the development of a durable grassroots farm lobby, a hybrid mode of exercising political influence that combines features of interest group lobbying and social movement protest. The first episode saw the mobilization of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), a nation-wide protest organization devoted to achieving a federal guarantee of parity prices. When AAM's attempt to change federal farm policy failed, it was unable to sustain a high level of member mobilization or organizational activity. This failure is attributed to the lack of a stable organizational structure, the lack of durable membership incentives, and the counterproductive effects of disruptive protest tactics. The second episode of protest occurred in reaction to the farm-debt crisis of the 1980s. Protesting farmers organized numerous crisis groups to provide emergency services to financially distressed farmers. The crisis groups coalesced into the National Save the Family Farm Coalition (NSFFC) in order to exert influence over federal farm policy. It is argued that this coalition structure, along with membership incentives provided by crisis groups through their constituent service programs, may allow this latest farm movement to exert more considerable and durable influence over federal farm policy than AAM was able to do in the late 1970s. The problems of maintaining a national coalition of grassroots groups are discussed and evaluated.
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Notes 1. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society in August, 1987 at Madison, Wisconsin.
Mark Lundgren teaches in the Sociology Department at Iowa State University and works on the research staff of Prairiefire Rural Action. He is currently conducting research on the farm movement for his PhD dissertation.
William P. Browne is Professor of Political Science, Central Michigan University. His major area of research is the agricultural and rural policy process but he has done previous work in urban and aging policy. In addition to numerous articles, he has published a series of five books on agriculture and rural policy, as well as the recently publishedPrivate Interests, Public Policy, and American Agriculture. In 1985–86 he was a visiting scholar with the Economic Research Service, USDA.
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Browne, W.P., Lundgren, M.H. Farmers helping farmers: Constituent services and the development of a grassroots farm lobby. Agric Hum Values 4, 11–28 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01530638
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01530638