1. Cochrane, Willard C., The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 378–395Google Scholar. The idea was developed earlier in a chapter of another book. See his chapter, “The Agricultural Treadmill,” in his Farm Prices, Myth and Reality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958). Amish and Mennonite farmers not withstanding, economists find the treadmill argument compelling.

2. Benedict, Murray R., Farm Policies of the United States, 1790–1950 (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1953)Google Scholar; Robinson, Kenneth L., Farm and Food Policies and Their Consequences (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1989), 2–18Google Scholar.

3. Robinson, Farm and Food Policies, 3; Anderson, Kym, “On Why Agriculture Declines with Economic Growth,” Agricultural Economics, 1 (1987): 195–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. For a more detailed review see Bonnen, James T. and Browne, William P., “Why Is Agricultural Policy so Difficult to Reform?” in Kramer, Carol S., ed., The Political Economy of U.S. Agriculture: Challenges for the 1990s (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1989), 13–19Google Scholar. For commentary on the mission of USDA see Talbot, Ross B. and Hadwiger, Don F., The Policy Process in American Agriculture (San Francisco: Chandler, 1968), 225–252Google Scholar.

5. Baker, Gladys L., The County Agent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939)Google Scholar; Rasmussen, Wayne D. and Baker, Gladys L., The Department of Agriculture (New York: Prager, 1972), 6–16Google Scholar; Hamilton, David E., “Building the Associative State: The Department of Agriculture and American State-Building,” Agricultural History 64 (1990): 207–218Google Scholar; Hamilton, David E., From Xew Day to Sew Deal: American Farm Policy From Hoover to Roosevelt, 1928–1933 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

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7. The best source is Benedict, Murray R., “Agriculture as a Commercial Industry Comparable to Other Branches ol the Economy,” Journal of Farm Economics, 24 (1942): 476–496CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. This and the following data are taken from Economic Indicators of the Farm Sector: National Financial Summary, 1986 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Re-search Service, 1986) and updates in Agricultural Outlook (Washington, DC: USDA, ERS, annually).

9. Estimate from U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 1990.

10. Penn, J.B., “The Structure of Agriculture: An Overview of the Issue,” in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Structure Issues of American Agriculture (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economics, Statistics, and Cooperatives Service, 1979), 2–23Google Scholar; Ruttan, Vernon W., Agricultural Research Policy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 17–44Google Scholar.

11. Webber, David J. edited a collection of articles that makes this point. See his Biotechnology: Assessing Social Impacts and Policy Implications (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

12. Penn, “The Structure of Agriculture,” 13; Reining, Robert C., Structural Change in U.S. Farmland (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 1990)Google Scholar.

13. Ibid.

14. Halberg, Milton C., The U.S. Agricultural and Food System: A Postwar Historical Perspective (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, 1988), 10Google Scholar.

15. Kohl, Barbara A., “Farm Movement Ideologies in the Late Seventies: The American Agriculture Movement.” Unpublished manuscript (Columbus: The Ohio State University, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, 1979), 45Google Scholar.

16. Browne, William P., Private Interests, Public Policy, and Ameiican Agriculture (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), 64–88Google Scholar.

17. Browne, William P., “An Emerging Opposition? Agricultural Interests and Federal Agricultural Policy,” in Hadwiger, Don F. and Browne, William P., ed., Public Policy and Agricultural Technology: Adversity Despite Achievement (New York: St. Martins, 1987), 81–90Google Scholar; Browne, William P. and Hamm, Larry G., “Political Choice and Social Values: The Case of bGH,” Policy Studies Journal 17 (1988): 181–192Google Scholar.

18. This can be seen best in the comments of Roman Catholic church officials. In turning their attentions to family farm preservation, Catholic activists also wrote of the land steward-ship and ethical dimensions lost in conversions to large-scale farming. See, for example, Nolan, Hugh J., Pastoral Letters of the United States Catholic Bishops, vol. 3, 1962–1974 (Washington, DC: United Stales Catholic Conference, 1983), 195–197Google Scholar, 404–405, 465; Nolan, HughJ., Pastoral Letters of the United States Catholic Bishops, vol. 4, 1975–1983 (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1984), 47–53, 126Google Scholar; Committee on Social Development and World Peace, The Family Farm (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1979); Dingman, Maurice, “What Does Christian Theology Have To Do With The Farm Crisis?” Paper prepared for As There a Moral Obligation to Save the Family Farm? Conference (Ames: Iowa State University, 1986)Google Scholar.

19. Penn, “The Structure of Agriculture,” 23; Browne, William P., “Mobilizing and Activating Group Demands: The American Agriculture Movement,” Social Science Quarterly 64 (1983): 19–34Google Scholar.

20. Aruna Nayyar Michic and Craig Jagger, “Why Farmers Protest: Kansas Farmers, The Farm Problem, and the American Agriculture Movement.” Monograph (Manhattan, KA: Kansas State University, Agricultural Experiment Station, 1980); Cigler, Allan J. and Hansen, John Mark, “Group Formation Through Protest: The American Agriculture Movement,” in Cigler, Allan J. and Loomis, Burdett A., eds., Interest Group Politics (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1983), 84–109Google Scholar. See also McCathern, Gerald, Gentle Rebels (Hereford, TX: Food for Thought Publications, 1982)Google Scholar.

21. Browne, “Mobilizing and Activating Group Demands,” pp. 28–29; Browne, William P. and Dinse, John, “The Emergence of The American Agriculture Movement, 1977–1979,” Great Plains Quarterly 5 (1985): 221–235Google Scholar.

22. The dominance of these two proposed changes in policy direction can be seen in Hildreth, R.J., Lipton, Kathryn L., Clayton, Kenneth C., and O'Connor's, Carl C. seminal anthology, Agriculture and Rural Areas Approaching the Twenty-first Century: Challenges for Agricultural Economics (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. Among those I have interviewed, numerous advocates of policy change of this sort see farm rebellion as facilitating the two. Other activists disagree as to this potential.

23. Neustadt, Richard E. and May, Ernest R., Thinking in Time: The L'ses of History for Decision Makers (New York: Free Press. 1986)Google Scholar.

24. Ibid., 244–245.

25. March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

26. Ibid., 159.

27. Kalbacher, Judith Z. and Brooks, Nora L., “Farmers Are Part of American Main-stream,” Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues 5 (1990): 22–23Google Scholar.

28. Shannon, Fred A., American Farmers Movements (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1957)Google Scholar. For an excellent review of the farm organizations discussed and others, see Dyson, Lowell K., Farmers' Organizations (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

29. Saloutos, Theodore, Farmer Movements in the South, 1865–1933 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

30. Hofstader, Richard, The Age of Reform (New York: Knopf, 1953), 109Google Scholar; Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South, 187; Saloutos, Theodore and Hicks, John D., Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900–1939 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951), 114, 154Google Scholar.

31. Shover, John L., Cornbelt Rebellion: The Farmers' Holiday Association (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Brandsberg, George, The Two Sides in NFO's Battle (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1964), 9Google Scholar.

32. Browne and Dinse, “The Emergence of the American Agriculture Movement,” 230–232.

33. That analysis depends on the logic of Coase, Ronald H., “The Nature of the Firm,” Economica 4 (1937): 386–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Browne, William P. and Lundgren, Mark H., “Farmers Helping Farmers: Constituent Services and the Development of a Grassroots Farm Lobby,” Agriculture and Human Values 4 (1987): 11–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Browne, William P. and Hadwiger, Don F., World Food Policies: Toward Agricultural Interdependence (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1986)Google Scholar; Paarlberg, Robert L., Fixing Farm Trade: Policy Options for the United States (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1988)Google Scholar.

36. I emphasized leadership interviews because such individuals were the ones most likely to be able to explain purpose and strategy of group activity. In addition, they were the ones most likely to be informed about events and political involvement. Leadership in the protest groups was always shared very broadly, however, so an abundance of activists claimed leadership status. The dependence on my previous work explains the frequent and embarrassing use of my own citations in this paper.

37. Bonnen and Browne, “Why is Agricultural Policy So Difficult to Reform?”

38. I was less able to judge sincerity of agrarian beliefs, however. Respondents ironically demonstrated both cynicism of and a simultaneous adherence to agrarian values.

39. In stage 1, only 53 of 156 respondents completed the relatively long questionnaire. The confusing public conditions of protest often disrupted the interviews. Nonetheless, substantive information was gained from each respondent.

40. A few respondents were included in two, or even three, studies.

41. Background for the following events can be found in McCathern, Gerald, From the White House to the Hoosegow (Canyon, TX: Staked Plains Press. 1978); Browne, “Mobilizing and Activating Group Demands”; Cigler and Hansen, “Group Formation Through Protest”; Browne and Dinse, “The Emergence of the American Agriculture Movement.”Google Scholar

42. Parity, of course, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture index of farm commodity purchasing power based on 1910–1914 prices. See Teigen, Lloyd, Price Panly: An Outdated Farm Policy Tool? (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 1987)Google Scholar.

43. Cigler and Hansen, “Group Formation Through Protest,” 14.

44. Sales exceeding $100,000 in 1969 prices, U.S. Department of Agriculture index.

45. Cigler, Allan J., “From Protest Group to Interest Group: The Making of American Agriculture Movement, Inc.” in Cigler, Allan J. and Loomis, Burdett A., ed., Interest Group Politics, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1986), 46–69; Browne, Private Interests, Public Policy and American Agriculture, 66–72Google Scholar.

46. Cigler, “From Protest Group to Interest Group,” 57–62.

47. Daniel Levitas and Leonard Zeskind, “The Farm Crisis and the Radical Right.” Paper prepared for the Rural Sociological Society annual meetings, 1986.

48. Browne and Lundgren, “Farmers Helping Farmers,” 16–21; Lundgren, Mark H., “National Family Farm Coalition,” in Browne, William P. and Cigler, Allan J., ed., U.S. Agricultural Groups: Institutional Profiles (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990), 163–167Google Scholar.

49. Hadwiger, Don F. and Talbot, Ross B., Pressures and Protests: The Kennedy Farm Program and the Wheat Referendum of 1963 (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965)Google Scholar.

50. Browne, William P., “Agricultural Policy Can't Accommodate All Who Want In,” Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues 4 (1989): 9–11Google Scholar.

51. Browne, Private Interests, Public Policy, and American Agriculture, 235–236.

52. See three articles by Bonnen, James T.. “Implications for Agricultural Policy,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 55 (1973): 391–398Google Scholar; “Observations on the Changing Nature of National Agricultural Policy Decision Processes, 1946–76,” in Peterson, Trudy H., ed., Farmers, Bureaucrats, and Middlemen: Perspectives on American Agriculture (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1980), 309–327; “U.S. Agriculture, Instability, and National Political Institutions: The Shift from Representative to Participatory Democracy,” in United Stales Agricultural Policy for 1985 and Beyond (Tucson, AZ: Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Arizona, 1984), 53–83. For specific strategy, see Browne, Private Interests, Public Policy, and American AgricultureGoogle Scholar.

53. Browne, “Agricultural Policy Can't Accommodate All Who Want In.”

54. I do not mean to suggest here that all participating groups gave up their common goals and identity to the coalition. On the contrary, the coalition came to encapsulate each group's goals independently in order to ensure mutual cooperation. See for an explanation Browne, William P., “Organized Interests and Their Issue Niches: A Search for Pluralism in a Policy Domain,” Journal of Politics 52 (1990): 477–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. Browne and Lundgren, “Farmers Helping Farmers,” 20–25; Lundgren, Mark H., “Tweeten as Exorcist: A Response to ‘Sector as Personality’,” Agriculture and Human Values 4 (1987): 47–53Google Scholar. See also Cigler, Allan J., “Organizational Maintenance and Political Activity on the ‘Cheap’: The American Agriculture Movement,” in Cigler, Allan J. and Loomis, Burdett A., ed., Interest Group Politics, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1991), 81–107Google Scholar.

56. Mark H. Lundgren. “Cabalism and ‘Common Law’ in the Countryside: The Campaign by Right-Wing Radicals to Exploit the Farm Crisis.” Paper prepared for the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting, 1987.

57. Tweeten, Luther, “Sector as Personality: The Case of Farm Protest Movements,” Agriculture and Human Values 4 (1987): 66–74Google Scholar; Tweeten, Luther, “Farm Activism: A Study in Conflicting Goals, Values, and Beliefs,” Research in Domestic and International Agribusiness Management 8 (1988): 165–182Google Scholar.

58. Tweeten, “Farm Activism,” 181.

59. Browne, Private Interests, Public Policy, and American Agriculture 213–236; Browne and Lundgren, “Farmers Helping Farmers,” 25–26.

60. Strange, Marty, Family Farming: A New Economic Vision (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

61. They did not get wide support from farmers, though. Even AAM, concerned with its unique farm-policy views, failed to cooperate with these proposals.

62. The economists' view can be seen in publications prepared for 1985 farm bill de-bates. See, for example, Gardner, Bruce L., ed., U.S. Agricultural Policy: The 1985 Farm Legislation (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1985)Google Scholar; Price, Kent A., ed., The Dilemmas of Choice (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 1985)Google Scholar.

63. Strange, for example, ignores this phenomenon in his otherwise-comprehensive analysis, Family Farming.

64. This was a view typically expressed to me by Washington-based economists in USDA and from private consulting firms. It was also characteristic of land-grant economists with whom I talked regularly. It can be seen in Greg Hansen's remarks about what Nebraska farmers “should have” demanded. See “Beyond the Farm Debt Crisis,” Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, 5 (1990): 33–35.

65. Institutions, it seems, are at the base of movement politics. See Salisbury, Robert H., “Political Movements in American Politics: An Essay on Concepts and Analysis,” Xalional Political Science Review, 1 (1989): 15–30Google Scholar.

66. For more on this type of phenomenon see Stinchcombe, Arthur L., Information and Organizations (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), 194–239Google Scholar.

67. Some economists argue that this broke the “social contract” between farmers and government/the public. Tweeten, “Sector as Personality,” 73.

68. Browne, Private Interests, Public Policy, and American Agriculture, 213–236.

69. Ripley, Randall B. and Franklin, Grace A., Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy, 5th ed. (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1991), 95Google Scholar. See also the 4th ed., 1987.

70. The following is very much a synthesis of ideas on transaction costs. The concept is that of Coase, “The Nature of the Firm.” Historian Douglass C. North also is an important figure. See “Institutions, Transaction Costs and Economic Growth,” Economic Inquiry, 25 (1987): 419–428; and Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Williamson, Oliver, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets, Relational Contracting (New York: Free Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Hecter, Michael, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkely, CA: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

71. Farm Costs and Returns Survey, (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 1990).

72. An estimate of this split can be seen by looking at above average production cost regions, especially the Great Plains and Southeastern U.S. If water and public land costs are increased, the remainder of the western U.S. could be added.

73. Hansen, “Bevond the Farm Debt Crisis.”

74. Salisbury, “Political Movements in American Politics,” 16.

75. Browne, Private Interests, Public Policy, and American Agriculture, 213–276

76. Ibid., 225–227.

77. Eyerman, Ron and Jamison, Andrew, Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

78. Free-market reformers also were active in agricultural politics at the time. Despite attachment to candidate Reagan and calls to abandon price supports, farm protestors never cooperated with those interests.

79. There exists, by my own best count, at least 200 protest leaders across the Midwest and Great Plains who are still very active in farm politics. Many of them, despite a greater interest in farm programs, worked and testified on the importance of environmental and rural programs in the 1990 farm bill debates. See, for example, 1990 Farm Bill U.S. Senate Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and House of Representatives Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990).

80. And, despite their economic problems, many farm-protest leaders managed to, if necessary, restructure finances to stay in business over these years. They continue to use available federal programs to do so.

81. For thoughts on the declining stature of national agricultural institutions see Bonnen, “Observations on the Changing Nature of National Agricultural Policy Decision Processes.”

82. March and Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions.

83. For more on the preemptive policy effects of the agricultural establishment and how it has worked, see Browne, William P., Form over Substance, Past and Present: The Institutional Failure of National U.S. Rural Policy. (Washington, DC: Ford Foundation and the Aspen Institute, Rural Economic Policy Program, 1992)Google Scholar.

84. Rasmussen, and Baker, , The Department of Agriculture; Gaus, John M. and Wolcott, Leon O., ed., Public Administration and the United States Department of Agriculture (Chicago: Public Service Administration, 1940)Google Scholar.

85. Dyson, Fanners' Organizations, 239.

86. Ibid.; Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal; Hadwiger and Talbot, Pressures and Protests. Efforts to limit production were left to established groups, such as the National Farmers Union, that did not need to galvanize a new following around such difficult to sell ideas.

87. Cochrane, The De-oelopment of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis.

88. Dyson, Farmers' Organizations, provides an excellent overview of this.

89. Hansen, John Mark, Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919–1981 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 1–25Google Scholar. See also Hansen, John Mark, “Choosing Sides: The Creation of an Agricultural Policy Network in Congress, 1919–1932,” Studies in American Political Development 2 (1987): 183–229Google Scholar.

90. Dyson, Farmers' Organizations; Saloutos and Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West; Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South; Brandsberg, The Two Sides in NFO's Battle; Shover, Combelt Rebellion.

91. Dyson, Lowell K., Red Harvest: The Communist Party and American Farmers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

92. Niches, as a concept in interest-group studies, are important since they give the group a unique political identity associated with a highly specific and recognizable issue position. With a recognizable niche comes at least minimal political credibility. See William P. Browne, “Organized Interests and Their Issue Niches.”