Free Lentil Underground by Liz Carlisle

several of itsfresh-faced volunteers launched a new group, to promote alternative solutions. In another living room—at the roomy Billings Victorian that Kye and her comrades had christened “Bozovilla” (in tribute to a psychedelic political radio theater show)—the Alternative Energy Resources Organization was born.

    A proud member of both AERO and NPRC, Russ Salisbury liked reminding people just how far-reaching the roots of Montana’s sustainable agriculture movement really were. This “new” approach to farming hadn’t begun as a hippie project in the radical sixties and seventies, or as a desperate response to the eighties farm crisis. It had grown out of a deep agrarian heritage, a heritage that underpinned the strip-mining fight, the counterculture, and even Russ himself. Russ didn’t quite wear this story on his sleeve, but it was plainly visible on his favorite vest. Denim blue, with a sheepskin lining and collar, it was emblazoned with an orange logo that read “Farmers Union.”
LEGISLATION, EDUCATION, COOPERATION
    Russ had been a member of the Farmers Union since he was eight. He’d gone to the union’s camp every summer and learned its three key principles: legislation, education, and cooperation. Now a local authority on this century-old farmers’ organization, Russ thought newcomers to “alternative agriculture” ought to know its story too.
    The Farmers Educational Cooperative Union of America was founded in Texas in 1902, as a response to increasing monopoly power in the grain business. The very next year, the group hadformed its first marketing cooperative. From an initial membership of ten, the Farmers Union had rapidly grown in both numbers and influence, particularly in the grain belt states of Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas. One grain pool at a time, the group’s members attempted to wrest control of American agriculture back from wealthy corporations. By the early 1940s, the grassroots coalition had established itself as a respected political force, credited with everything from the cooperative structure of rural electrification to the institutionalization of the national school lunch program to the successful campaign for women’s suffrage. As the rural counterpart to the US labor movement, the Farmers Union sought to organize working people so that they could use their economic and political power to demand some measure of control over their own lives.
    Unique among American farm organizations, the Farmers Union had connected the dots between domestic and foreign policies, calling for cooperation among the world’s peoples rather than military and economic competition. Unfortunately, this prescient attention to the disastrous trajectory of globalization had landed the group in hot water during the cold war, when it was accused of promoting communism and closely monitored by both the State Department and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although the National Farmers Union never faced prosecution, its leaders got the message. If they wanted to stay in business, they’d better soften their critiques of US trade policy and stick to more traditional agrarian issues. By scaling back its more ambitious aims, the union had managed to survive the McCarthy years: but not before its national leadership expelled several outspoken chapters that refused to be silenced.
    The Farmers Union had become a bit more staid in recent years, Russ admitted, but the movement it seeded hadn’t sloweddown. The group’s populist energy had merely been transplanted to new institutional contexts, where people continued to practice legislation, education, and cooperation in the name of a dignified rural life. “It seemed like AERO became the new Farmers Union,” Russ reflected. “They were the new idealistic people thinking and coming up with new ideas.”
    Still, Russ thought, it was important to remember