Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only the Beginning.(Brief Article)

Dyer (editor, Boulder Weekly) discusses the connection between the farm crisis of the 1980s and the rise of the antigovernment movement of the 1990s. Encouraged by the federal government to plant "fence row to fence row" during the 1970s, small farmers have since witnessed declining markets, falling prices, and the rise of multinational food companies, which brought massive foreclosures and bankruptcies among small farmers during the 1980s. This led to a rise in suicides and murders among individuals faced with the loss of their land. Other farmers turned to racist ideologies and conspiracy theories, seeing the crisis as part of a plot by Jews, international bankers, or the …