Young farmers will not recall this. I was a freshman in high school in 1979, when the American Agriculture Movement tractorcade left Nebraska and other farm states in our vicinity, traveling 1,500 miles to Washington, D.C., to protest what farmers deemed unjust federal farm policies.

I recall national news stories featuring a Nebraska farmer, Warren “Corky” Jones from Brownville, talking about the idea of 100% parity for farmers, or guaranteed prices that cover a farmer’s cost of production.

Farmers at that time were worried about depressed grain and livestock prices that didn’t cover the rising input costs. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Loss of a legend

On Dec. 4, Jones passed away at a community hospital in Fairfax, Missouri, at the age of 93. But reading his obituary and memorials brought those tractorcade days back into my memory, and I’m sure in the recollections of farmers and farm families who not only recall the farmer protests in our nation’s capital but perhaps were a part of those demonstrations.

The 1970s farmer protests were nothing new. During the depth of the Great Depression and the height of the “Dirty Thirties” drought, the Farmers Holiday Association organized farmers to promote the idea of higher farm income and improved federal farm policy to protect farmers living on and working the land.

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Grain prices in 1932, at the height of that protest, were less than a third of what they were in 1920. In May of that year, angry farmers gathered in Des Moines, lambasting President Herbert Hoover’s federal farm policies and resolving to basically “go on strike,” refusing to buy or sell any farm products until the price of grain rose above the cost of production. After Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, some of that fervor died down as the government dealt with the farm crisis of the time through New Deal legislation.

Active role

But the AAM protests and tractorcades of the late 1970s and early 1980s were born out of the same grievances by farmers back in the late 1920s and early 1930s. And Jones was in the thick of it all, serving as vice president of the AAM and eventually serving one year as national president.

Over the years, as the farm crisis of the 1980s thickened, Jones and many of the original AAM organizers moved to the Farm Aid campaign. Jones befriended Farm Aid mainstay supporters such as Willie Nelson.

In 1987, Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp headlined the Farm Aid concert held at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln to a crowd of 69,000. The 10-hour concert featuring 40 acts raised $1.7 million for plighted farmers. And Jones was a friend and proud supporter of subsequent Farm Aid concerts since the beginning.

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Farm Aid’s blog posted the day after Jones’ death honored the Nebraska farm activist and his leadership, in particular the 1979 tractorcade, saying the organization will miss his “softspoken but determined voice for agriculture.”

Learn more about Jones’ life at farmaid.org/blog/farm-aid-remembers-our-friend-corky-jones.