Reports in these pages over past several months help bring out the facts about the devastating crisis farmers face today. With falling prices paid by the grain and food monopolies for the products of farmers' labor - including hogs, milk, wheat, cranberries, and more - farmers are being driven more deeply into debt slavery. The story of the three farmers in New Jersey told in this issue is not unusual: they faced the added strike against them of sex discrimination in obtaining loans needed to keep their farm operations going.

A product of the farm crisis is the decisions by some farmers to fight back, thus helping to forge an important ally for the continuing strikes and actions by workers and their unions resisting assaults today. When a wave of farmers struggles rose in the 1980s the labor movement was in serious retreat, unable to reach out and reinforce the farmers' battles in a common struggle against the corporations and their government.

Many farmers, and workers as well, have learned of and been inspired by the struggle waged by farmers against racist discrimination at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While facing the same squeeze all farmers do, farmers who are Black have to battle practices aimed at driving them off their land in even greater numbers.

Utilizing the coming weeks to get out the word about the January 17 march, and another planned for February in Washington, D.C., is a way to concretely strengthen all our struggles.  
 
 
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