THE FARMERS' ALLIANCE was an umbrella term for several grassroots farmers organizations active between 1877 and 1892, most prominently in the South and the Plains states. These groups sought to ameliorate debt, poverty, and low crop prices by educating and mobilizing rural men and women, engaging in cooperative economic organizing, and asserting their power in electoral politics.
One of its goal was to end the adverse effects of the crop-lien system
on farmers in the period.
