Biography
Wayne Cryts, born in Missouri in 1946, was a soybean farmer and member of the American Agriculture Movement who became a national symbol of the farm crisis. After a grain elevator holding his crop went bankrupt, Cryts and hundreds of supporters removed about 31,000 bushels of his soybeans in February 1981. A federal bankruptcy judge jailed him for civil contempt on April 28, 1982 because he refused to identify the farmers who helped him; he was released June 1. He was jailed again from August 14 to August 16 for refusing to pay court-ordered fines. Congress later changed federal grain-elevator bankruptcy law to better protect farmers’ ownership interests.
