Review of \u3ci\u3e American Agriculture and the Problem of Monopoly: The Political Economy of Grain Belt Farming, 1953-1980\u3c/i\u3e by Jon Lauck

Through the years, nothing has marked agrarian political discourse on the Great Plains quite as much as the charge of monopoly. Farmers\u27 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\u27 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