Hope Nolan pointed this.

The DFL was created in 1944 by the merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the Farmer–Labor Party. The Farmer–Labor Party in turn arose from the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota and the Union Labor Party in Duluth. The Nonpartisan League favored state control of mills, grain elevators, banks and other farm-related industries, while the Union Labor Party represented the iron miners, loggers and sawmill workers in northern Minnesota. All of these early parties were basically socialist or socialist-leaning. The farmers were not union members or supporters as such, but especially during the Depression they were looking for ways to keep corporate political interests from controlling the prices paid them by grain elevators and mills, and loan practices of banks. The reason the DFL was created was that both the union workers and the famers had the common interest of resisting the corporations' ability to keep their prices and wages low.

But now, I think, their interest diverged. I suspect that now farmers see "government" as interfering with their operations, more so than corporations.

Also, I think that operations by corporations are now more regulated by, yes, the "government" so farmers feel that they can stand up to them.

The Rural areas feel that their tax dollars are funneled into urban areas to pay for everything in the cities. The Urban areas feel their tax dollars are being taken to pay for outstate needs.

(neither one grew up on farms) and even back then the farmers in that area were largely Republican, despite the number of farms that were foreclosed on.

The family of my aunt's late husband owned a farm in that area and my uncle once said that he always voted DFL because his father went to his grave swearing he would have lost the farm if it had not been for FDR...Apparently uncle's dad had more sense than the average farmer in that area.

the party are trying really hard to lose that, too.