Final answer:
Farmers organized under the Farmers' Alliance to withhold crops and negotiate better rates with railroads. This effort included innovative strategies like the subtreasury plan and led to increased farmer political activism, culminating in the Populist Party.
Step-by-step explanation:
Farmers organized and created the Farmers' Alliance to hold back crops from the market to force up prices and negotiate better shipping rates with the railroads. The Alliance movement, which included the southern and western Farmers' Alliance, as well as the Colored Farmers' National Alliance, was instrumental in educating farmers on a variety of economic issues and encouraged the use of collective action to improve their conditions. The subtreasury plan was particularly innovative, proposing that the federal government store crops and provide loans to farmers against their stored crops, allowing them to weather low market prices and repay the loans once crop prices rose.
Initiated by the Farmers' Alliance, this collective action drew from previous movements like the Grange, which laid the groundwork for farmers' cooperatives and battles against railroad companies as early as the late 19th century. Despite facing internal divisions and pushback from industrial powers, the Farmers' Alliance managed to forge a national agenda and unite a broad base of farmers pushing for economic and political reform, ultimately leading to the rise of the Populist Party.