The Market Struggle Strategy And Its Evolution Of National Farmers Organization From 1955 To 1979

After the Korean War, the price of agricultural products dropped sharply in America because of the changing over supply-demand relationship and agricultural policies. In addition to this, a terrible drought happened in the Midwest of the period, consequently, National Farmers Organization (NFO) emerged out and struggled continuously in order to improve the price of agricultural products. Since the time of its establishment to 1979 when the significant change took place in the leadership of the organization, NFO’s struggle strategies became mature gradually. In the methods of struggle, after the frustration of the political petition in early stage, NFO chose the market method quickly and obtained a certain achievement eventually.Since NFO chose the market method as its struggle method, both the struggle strategy and the implementing measure of it had experienced obvious changes. These changes not only stemmed from the gains and losses of the strategies and measures themselves, but also stemmed from the changes of American social environment. The main content of this thesis is to expound NFO’s major market strategies of this period, hoping to make readers know a little more about rural America on microscopic level. And on this basis, the thesis will evaluate these strategies, analyze their influences, and search the inspiration to us.A summary of structure of the thesis:Chapter 1, briefly describes the historical background, direct causes of NFO’s emergence, introduces the characteristics and development course of the organization. Chapter 2, expounds the rapid transformation of NFO’s struggle method that changing from political petition to the way of market. The contents include why NFO chose political petition as its first way and the frustration of petition practice; why NFO chose market as its succeeding struggle place; and the thought of collective bargaining. Basing on chronological order, chapter 3 and chapter 4 will expound NFO’s two of the most important struggle strategies in market way. Centering on "Holding On" strategy, firstly chapter 3 will explain the fundamental meaning and characteristic of this strategy, then it will illustrate the implementing measure and effects of the strategy by stages, and analyze its major defects. Basing on different kinds of agricultural products, chapter 4 will expound "Block Marketing" strategy’s basic content and variation, major advantages and effects, and expound NFO how to use legal weapon to protect the fruits of victory from this strategy. Chapter 5 contains two aspects of contents:the first one is to evaluate NFO’s market strategies; the second one is to analyze the influences of these strategies.