America Needs Parity, Protest Pin
notes: label: Description
content: Parity (cost of a commodity equals the cost of production) is a continual theme of the American Agriculture Movement. Farmers were seeking 100% parity for their commodities, but many consumers feared that if the price of raw crops went up, then the price of the finished product in the store would rise exponentially as well. Many farmers felt it was not the price of the raw product that drove the price of the finished, but rather the production of the finished product that consumers paid for in the store.
label: Description
content: The farm crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s was triggered by several factors stemming from the early 1970s. When Earl Butz became the Secretary of Agriculture in 1971, he changed farm policies that provided supports to farmers who did not plant a certain percentage of their land, and instead asked farmers to plant “fence row to fence row” in order to increase production. New foreign markets had opened up, inflation was high which increased land values and interest rates were low which provided extra incentive for farmers to increase their landholdings and purchase modern equipment that made output from the land more productive. Many farmers took advantage of this confluence of factors to increase their income by following this advice.
label: Description
content: In the late 1970s, the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates in an attempt to bring down the rate of inflation. This happened at the same time foreign markets dried up and a trade embargo was placed on the Soviet Union. These factors meant farm income dwindled at the same time interest rates skyrocketed, eating up what little income remained for farmers. The members of the American Agriculture Movement were highly involved in protests through the late 1970s and 1980s, speaking to officials at all levels of U.S. government in an attempt to raise awareness of the growing farm crisis. Concern over the 1977 Farm Bill ignited the concern for many farmers who believed the bill would adversely affect farm income by lowering commodity prices to less than the cost of production. Farmers began to protest at all levels of government, most for the first time, in order to bring this to the attention of policy makers as well as the people.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Agriculture
label: See more items in
content: Agriculture
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Clifford Hamilton
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1993.0188.041
label: accession number
content: 1993.0188
label: catalog number
content: 1993.0188.041
objectType: label: Object Name
content: button
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 in; 2.54 cm