Farmers in America have always been in financial trouble. On the expense side are high capital investment and up-front planting costs. On the income side are weather uncertainty (drought, flood, frost), income only at harvest time, and the perverse fact that if the crop is good, prices are low. Cheaper transportation widened the market for the farmer, but meant that prices were always low: a bad crop in one place usually was offset by a good crop elsewhere. Yet the lives of all of us depend on agriculture. Notice that these protest songs simply state the facts -- there's no call to militant action, perhaps because farmers have never been very co-operative with each other.

The Farmer is the Man, performed by Bob Bovee & Gail Heil, vocal with fiddle, guitar and harmonica accompaniment. Recorded 2000 in Golden Valley, MN and released on their CD When the Cactus is in Bloom (Copper Creek CCCD-0181). The song reportedly dates from the 1860s, demonstrating how much things haven't changed.

Here's a concrete example of the observation from the previous song that "the middleman's the man who gets it all": Eleven Cent Cotton, Forty Cent Meat, performed by Carson Robison, vocal with guitar, harmonica, jew's harp and fiddle accompaniment. Recorded May, 1929 in New York City by American Record Company. Robison (1890-1957), released several solo records, but also played behind other, more famous, singers, such as Vernon Dalhart. The song was written by versatile Tin Pan Alley composer Bob Miller.

There was a severe shortage of capital in the post-civil-war south, and the farmers, as usual, bore the brunt of the problem. The only people with money ("carpetbaggers" from the north) bought the land and took on displaced farmers as sharecroppers. The owner supplied the seed and fed the farmer through the summer. At harvest time, the bill came to more than the crop brought in, leaving the farmer with the obligation to keep working for the land owner. A sharecropper's song: Down on Penny's Farm, performed by Bentley Boys, vocal with banjo & guitar accompaniment. It was recorded one week before the stock market crash (October, 1929) in Johnson City, Tennessee, by Columbia. The recording is re-released on the Smithsonian-Folkways 6-CD set, Anthology of American Folk Music. For more commentary on this song, as well as the music and lyrics, see http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-PennysFarm.html.

The capital shortage that was previously in the south is now everywhere. The carpetbagger has been replaced by the banker, and the sharecropper now nominally owns the land. But in order to stay there, he has to take out ever larger loans. Poor Old Dirt Farmer is performed by The Strange Creek Singers with lead vocal by Tracy Schwarz. It was recorded 1969 and released on the CD Strange Creek Singers, Arhoolie 9003. The Strange Creek Singers was an all-star group of vocalists: Hazel Dickens, Alice Gerrard, Lamar Grier, Tracy Schwarz, and Mike Seeger. Tracy Schwarz composed the song, based partly on his farming experiences in southern Pennsylvania. 

Bob Dylan wrote a parody (in the good sense) of Penny's Farm: Maggie's Farm is sung by Mike Seeger, accompanying himself on a banjo. The banjo style was inspired by Dock Boggs, who made records in the 1920s and spent many years as a coal miner. Mike Seeger rediscovered him in the 1960s, recorded him, and brought him to several music festivals. This performance is from Acoustic Disc CD ACD-37, Retrograss, a very interesting collaboration by David Grisman, John Hartford and Mike Seeger, recorded at Grisman's California studio in 1999.