Wayne Cryts

Wayne Cryts (1946- ) is a sixth-generation farmer who grew up on his family farm in Puxico, Missouri, near Missouri's Bootheel region. His wife, Sandy, also grew up on a family farm, and they ran the Cryts farm together after their 1964 marriage.

They became involved in the American Agriculture Movement (AAM) in 1978 and participated in AAM's tractorcades to Washington, D. C. in 1978 and 1979. Wayne and Sandy remained active with AAM throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, and Wayne served as a national officer and Missouri president.

In June 1980, the owners of the Ristine grain elevator near New Madrid, Missouri, where Wayne was storing 31,000 bushels of soybeans, went bankrupt. Elevator bankruptcies were commonplace, and farmers lacked economic protections when this occurred. A judge ruled that the grain stored at the elevator was an asset of the elevator company and should be sold to pay the company's debts. Farmers would have to wait in line with other creditors to be repaid for their crops.

Bankruptcy proceedings dragged on, and Wayne held a press conference in January 1981 to announce that if his soybeans were not turned over by February 16, 1981, he would go get them. Farmers from around the country, many of them members of AAM, traveled to help. On February 16th, Wayne led a procession of 3,000 farmers and 75 grain trucks to remove the soybeans from the Ristine elevator and move them to an elevator in Bernie, Missouri. Prosecutors attempted to bring charges againt Waybe for the raid, but a grand jury refused to indict.

In 1982, Wayne spent nearly a month in prison in Russellville, Arkansas for refusing to name the farmers who had collaborated with him in the raid to retrieve the soybeans. During this time, Senator Bob Dole was sponsoring a bill that would give farmers priority in claims against bankrupt elevator companies. Wayne was granted a furlough from jail at the request of Senator Dole, so that he could testify before Congress about how farmers were being hurt by existing bankruptcy law.

Wayne and Sandy Cryts eventually lost their farm to foreclosure in 1987, but they have remained active in advocacy and politics. Wayne ran for Congress in Missouri's 8th Congressional District in 1986 and 1988, although he lost both times. Wayne published his memoir, One Man with Courage: the Wayne Cryts Story in 2005, and he and Sandy continue to assist students across the country with History Day Projects focusing on the Ristine Grain Elevator.

American Agricultural Movement

The American Agricultural Movement was founded in the summer of 1977 as farmers met in Colorado to discuss falling farm prices and rising debt loads. The farmers wanted Congress to pass legislation raising farm prices and discussed a farm strike if family farms did not get the help they desperately needed.

In September 1977, two thousand farmers from across the country drove their tractors and trucks to Pueblo, Colorado, where U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bergland was speaking, to send the message that family farms in America were in trouble. AAM later staged multiple tractor parades, dubbed a "tractorcades," across the country, including January 1978 and February 1979 tractorcades to Washington, D. C.AAM members also advocated for farmers through media appearances on television and radio shows.

AAM also worked closely with Farm Aid after the first Farm Aid concert was held in 1985 by Willie Nelson and others to raise money to support family farms.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, AAM members also testified at Congressional hearings as Congress worked to pass the farm bills. While Congress and the U. S. Department of Agriculture did ultimately enact some policies to help farmers, they fell far short of AAM's goals.