The voice of agriculture isn't what it once was. With fewer farmers operating today than in the past, the voices are not as loud as they once were. This worries folks like Chuck Hassebrook, executive director at the Center for Rural Affairs at Lyons. "There are too few people weighing in the side of ordinary rural people and family-size farms," Hassebrook says.

"Furthermore, rural people who don't farm are largely not organized into membership organizations to speak with a unified voice and thus, have less influence," says Hassebrook.

There was a time when farmers carried the clout legislatively. And if they felt that they weren't being heard, they found ways to dramatize their plight. Dr. William Pratt, professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, told a group at the Missouri River History Conference last fall that there were four major farm protests in history that he considers significant in the Great Plains states.

Pratt cited the Populist movement of the 1890s, the Nonpartisan League that took over the legislature in North Dakota between 1916 and 1920, the Farm Holiday movement in the 1930s, and the farm crisis of the 1980s.

Each movement and protest has specific traits, but they are all related in many ways. The protests of the 1930s and 1980s were born of a true farm crisis, Pratt said. But all of the movements can trace roots back to the Populists of the 1890s, when this third party had candidates in Congress and state legislatures and pushed a number of farm initiatives.

Hassebrook says that farmers today have a challenge, because the numbers just aren't there. But he notes that there are ways to shape policy from the farm. He suggests three ways to become involved in farm policy.

• "Farmers and ranchers should join farm and commodity organizations and work through their resolution processes to ensure that organizational stands address their concerns and create a future for farms of all sizes," Hassebrook says. "The more who get active, the better job these organizations will do in representing rank and file producers."

• "Farmers and ranchers need to build alliances," he says. "It is critical to work with other rural people – the entire community – for policies that serve the common good of rural America." Hassebrook says that it's important to promote policies that invest in rural community development and rural small business, as well as agriculture.

• Hassebrook asks farmers to "embrace the responsibilities of citizenship in the world's greatest democracy." He says that farmers need to write letters and make phone calls to elected officials. "Citizen engagement is the fertilizer of democracy," he says.

Read more about Nebraska's farm protests of the past and how farmers today are shaping farm policy debate in the January issue of Nebraska Farmer.