One giant cause for U.S. agriculture began with one small cut when a Missouri farmer pulled a knife. As government gunmen hovered on rooftops and baton-wielding police closed ranks with tear gas, Jessie Small, alongside his son, Joe Small, darted between the cab and trailer of a U.S.-bound produce truck and sliced through the air lines, locking the vehicle's brakes and turning a giant hissing into the sound of defiance.

Backed by 250 fellow farmers, Small exposed a government narrative and lit the fuse on one of the most significant, yet forgotten, episodes of modern U.S. agriculture record.

A protest march by a small band of farming brothers careened into a buck-wild physical melee and mass arrest, followed by thousands of incensed growers from across the U.S. descending on the border town of McAllen, Texas, threatening to tear down a county prison with tractors and trigger a breakout with a break-in. As the clock rolled on three surreal days of incarceration in 1978, farmers Jericho-marched around the facility as violence waited in the wings.