The American Rescue Plan, signed by President Biden on March 11, includes $4 billion in debt relief payments for minority farmers. But advocates say two important groups are missing: farmers who lost their farms due to discrimination, and those denied the opportunity to borrow from the USDA.
by Emma HurtJun, 04 2021 (All Things Considered)
President of the National Black Farmer s Association John Boyd stands in his fields in Baskerville, Va. He says the USDA s relief program is like the fox watching the hen house. Image: Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Farmers of color are set to get some unprecedented debt relief starting this month from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latest federal COVID aid package includes an estimated $4 billion for the USDA to wipe away these farmers debts.
It s an unprecedented Congressional mandate to make up for the damage that decades of lending discrimination has had on farmers of color. The distrust runs so deep that the department has been dubbed the last plantation.
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11:13 pm UTC Feb. 24, 2021
Billy Gibbons intends to die on this land.
At 70, the bespectacled Black farmer may very well be the last heir to work the family plot; 80 acres of black soil in Browntown, Alabama, an unincorporated community less than 20 miles north of Prattville.
Gibbons’ parents pinched and scraped to purchase the acreage for $850 in 1940. They intended to pass it down to him and his brother; but he died in 1976 after contracting meningitis while away at military training in Fort Polk, Louisiana.
“I can remember all of this was woods,” Gibbons said, waving his arm over the crop land that extended before him. It was a brooding morning that had already spilled rain and left his feet besieged by shallow pools of muddy water.
Black farmers say discriminatory practices by USDA have pushed many out of business
and last updated 2021-02-01 15:34:30-05
For decades, Black farmers say they have been at the mercy of historically discriminatory lending practices by the U.S. government and banks that do not treat them fairly.
âFarming is really hard for white males, and if itâs really hard for white males, then itâs dreadful for anyone else,â said Zephrine Hanson, an urban farmer who grows small crops she then sells to artisan shops.
Hanson and others say the practices have led to a precipitous decline in the number of Black farmers in our country.