There were many problems that farmers were facing back in the late 1800s, and here are some of them:
1. overproduction - they produced a lot of products that not enough people wanted to buy so this ended up with them going to waste
2. low crop prices - even when they did manage to sell some of their goods, they were so cheap that they couldn't earn a lot of money
3. high interest rates - when they asked for money from banks, sometimes they weren't able to pay back that money because of the interest rates
4. high transportation costs - it cost a lot of money to transport the goods they produced
Farmers started forming their own parties and unions to help alleviate these problems, which helped in the long run.
