ABSTRACT
Central to American agrarian ideology is the notion that individual freeholders constitute the backbone of the economy. Agrarian political activity has characterized the rural sector throughout the history of the United States. In 1982 the voters of Nebraska enacted Initiative 300, known popularly as the Nebraska Family Farm Amendment, which restricted the ownership of farmland in that state by corporate interests. This chapter examines the geographical distribution of votes for and against Initiative 300, and in doing so to apply a social-theoretic perspective to the position of Mid Western producers within the changing political economy of the United States. Thus agrarian social struggle, like other social movements, is best examined in the context of the political economy of capitalism. Such movements often referred to by the generic term 'populism', have focused on specific characteristics of capitalism rather than its underlying economic foundations.
