The AF was “[o]rganized in Fresno on 28 March 1934 by members of the California State Chamber of Commerce and the California Farm Bureau” and the founders considered it as “an emergency organization set up to prevent a recurrence of the strikes of 1933.”[2] Numerous farm organizations including the Grange and the Farm Bureau already existed, but the AF “arose in 1934 out of the numerous citizen associations that were created in 1933 to combat farmworker unionization.”[1] As the number of annual strikes increased in the 1930s, AF chapters spread throughout the state, with 42 chapters eventually in place and “the total number of individuals mobilized probably exceed[ing] 50,000 and may have been as high as 70,000.
"[2] The real extent of the business community's support of the Associated Farmers was only fully revealed during the Senate inquiry into the group's anti-labor activities, which were determined to violate free speech and assembly as well as the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively.
The Associated Farmers kept files on more “than a thousand suspected subversives (read, union organizers), sharing this information with police officials throughout the state.
A letter from the Associated Farmers to the Olive Hillside groves requested their help “To better assist you in determining any possible agitators or workers with undesirable affiliations in your employment, we are asking you to mail us a complete list of your pickers or field laborers.
The vigilantes were untrained in police tactics but were nonetheless armed with 20 inch pick axe handles, and in some cases tear gas, and turned loose on strikers.
Local anti-picketing ordinances sprang up throughout California, and “the Associated Farmers helped secure the passage of such ordinances.” These ordinances had sweeping prohibitions on speech (and were later deemed unconstitutional) including “prohibit[ing] the use of language...that tended to provoke a breach of the peace...” and making it “unlawful for any person to utter...or to make any loud noise or to speak in a loud or unusual tone...” to prevent people from patronizing a business under labor negotiations.
"[4] The anti-syndicalism laws also helped put numerous labor leaders like Pat Chambers, Caroline Decker, and others into jail, successfully breaking strikes through "eliminat[ing] union leadership.
The committee heard testimony on the violence in the 1934 lettuce strike, attacks on attorneys, vigilantism, and even a motion by the local Associated Farmers group of the Imperial Valley to investigate the cost of machine guns to arm the sheriff's office.
The public testimony revealed during the La Follette committee hearings, along with the advent of World War 2 and the fading of the Great Depression, all contributed to the gradual elimination of the Associated Farmers as a significant source of union opposition in California.