The rhetoric has been loud and rowdy since President Biden signed The American Relief Act Plan of 2021. Most of us know very little about what is actually inside the bill, but some of us know about the "Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act," introduced by Senator Warnock as part of the Bill. This particular part of the bill will remove the debt of minority farmers, classified as Socially Disadvantaged Farmers (or SDF), specifically covering 120% of their debt, which includes state and federal taxes on the forgiven amount.
White people, farmers, and congressional folks are calling this discrimination against white farmers, or reparations, or that it will create a divide between black farmers and white farmers.
For those who want to read just a few words, here is the summary. For those who want more information, please read on. The short verse is that the USDA has a history of systemic racism in which black farmers (and other minority farmers) have been discriminated against. Such discrimination leads to indebtedness, which leads to foreclosures, which leads to land loss and the generational wealth that goes with it. Period. End of discussion. Warnock's bills are timely as more black people lose their land and as more black farmers die before justice is realized.
I think we need to get our whiteness under control. That's perhaps an impossible task. Inherent within the whiteness factor is that all farmers are treated equally by the USDA. Wrong. Very, very wrong. Also, within the whiteness factor is that if a minority farmer is foreclosed upon, then they are just bad farmers. Listen to the 1619 Project and you'll hear that said by a white sugar-cane farmer in Louisiana. Also, inherent within the whiteness factor is the memory lapse, or convenient failure to remember that the overwhelming majority of dollars has gone to the white farmer. Nobody denies that small family farms are suffering, but when you consider that USDA funds go to white farmers and that Trump's bailout money went to white farmers, the whiteness factor needs to be corrected. More details on that to follow below.
The USDA and its employees are much to blame. Administration after administration turned a blind eye to actions of discrimination on behalf of its employees. A local county agent could act with impunity toward a person of color knowing that there would be no price to pay for discriminating against someone. The system is designed that way. There is an absence of accountability and an absence of heart. The system is designed to protect itself. People, good people, know what's going on inside the USDA; however, they cannot talk unless they retire because they know that if they do, they will be removed, demoted, or fired. More on this in a future post.
In August 2019, the USDA Coalition for Minority Employees and the Justice for Black Farmers Group challenged Senator Elizabeth Warren when she was running for president. Black land loss is not explained, we asserted, by heir's property issues. She invited us to the table, we went, we engaged, we informed, and they learned from us. From that effort came Senator Warren's plan to address these grievances. You can find her full document here. Later, after Biden and Harris were elected, we received an email from Senator Booker's staff and informed that the senator was working on a black farmer's justice bill. When we saw the bill, we were elated to read The Justice for Black Farmers Act of 2020, which has now been resubmitted to Congress in the current legislative session. It very much looked like Warren's work several months earlier. In fact, it was very, very similar. Then, Senator Warnock was elected and since he knew the plight of black farmers, he inserted his bill within The American Recue Act Plan of 2021 that Biden signed into law recently.
There is more background that white America needs to know.
In 1920, there were approximately 950,000 black farmers and 5,500,000 white farmers. Blacks owned 22,000 farms, and whites owned 1,380,000 farms. Acreage owned by black farmers peaked at 19,000,000 (in 1910), and white owned 62,000,000. In 1920, the average acreage for a black farmer was 51 acres, but for the white farmer it was 166 acres. This is all from census data. It is organized in Hinson (2018). See the picture?
According to USDA census data in 2017, white producers farmed 1,973,006 farms totaling 849,816,725 acres, averaging 431 acres. The market value of products sold was $381,050,061,000; government payments were $8,851,913,000; and net-cash farm income was $86,037,984,000. By comparison, black farm producers farmed 35,470 farms totaling 4,673,140 acres, averaging 132 acres. The market value of products sold was $1,416,256,000; government payments were $58,807,000; and net cash from farm income was $124,459,000. This is all from the 2017 Census of Agriculture. See the picture?
In 1920, black farmers comprised 1/6 to 1/5 of all farmers, but now they make up only 1.7% of all farmers.
Numbers are compelling.
White farmers and Republican congressional folks are fussing. Thanks to the Environmental Working Group, we can actually look at a variety of matters including who actually received how much of the $425 billion in farm subsidies from commodity, crop insurance, disaster programs and conservation payments paid between 1995 and 2020. That document is found here.
The congressman, Representative Graves, who fussed about it, what does his operation get? Is he being discriminated against? His district in Missouri received $5B during the 1995 to 2020 window. His farm received $661,153, including $57,089 in 2019 alone. Tom Philpott's article tells the larger story.
And, during the Trump farmer bail-out window, white farmers received 97% of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, $6.7 billion going to white farmers, $15 million to black farmers, $100 million to Latino farmers, $76 million to American Indian farmers, and $17.6 million to Asian-American farmers. Check out this document at this link.
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