After Bill Clinton’s Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) abandoned rural America, I didn’t think Democrats would ever come back. But Harris surprised me.
We are an urban nation, so rural stories are rarely heard. But I think this one is worth hearing. Some might say this isn’t my story to tell. But things look a little different on my side of the rural urban divide, so tell it I will.
In 1920, there were almost a million black farmers in America. Today there are just 45,000 black farmers. What happened? In a nutshell, federal Agricultural policy systematically drove black farmers out of business and off their land. Since most of these losses occurred after 1950, I promise you, this is not old history. In fact, last month, August 2024, is the latest chapter in this story.
As John Boyd, President, and Founder, of the National Black Farmers Association, told Forbes about this month’s partial settlement…
“It’s not like working at McDonald's, where you can get another job at Hardee's. When you lose your farm, you lose your history. The loss is not just financial but also cultural and personal. It means losing your family cemetery, your identification, and all the things in the community that you live in. These losses are irreplaceable.”
“We must bring more attention to these significant issues so that Black farmers throughout America can have the financial input necessary to yield output that will allow them to feed not only their local communities but entire regions.”
“For decades, we have been fighting to end the discrimination facing Black farmers, and we have been doing it without real and material support from Black America,” Boyd said. “So while white America has been kicking our ass, Black America has been lacking in doing anything to support us.”
This most recent settlement dates back to Obama’s days as Senator. Obama was the first Senator who took action to remedy black farmer’s plight. Later, as President, Obama signed into law, the first stage of partial settlements known as Pigford 1 and Pigford 2.
Along came Trump and the case of black farmers faded into oblivion. Instead, Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, used his department’s Commodity Credit Corporation to pay commodity farmers and ranchers $28 billion for losses due to President Trump’s trade wars and tariffs. The next year, Trump's second Coronavirus Food Assistance Program provided an additional $14 billion in direct support for white farmers.
On December 22, 2020, one month before he was even sworn into office, Biden was back to work on the issues faced by black farmers. Fast forward three months, to March 2021 and one
element of President Biden’s massive stimulus relief package included $10.4 Billions for disadvantaged farmers — benefiting Black farmers in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Of the $10.4 billion in Biden’s American Rescue Plan that would support agriculture, approximately half would go to disadvantaged farmers. “This is the most significant piece of legislation with respect to the arc of Black land ownership in this country,” said Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center, which provides legal representation to Black farmers.
Less than one month later, in April 2021, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller sued the federal government claiming that the Biden administration was discriminating against white farmers and ranchers. Sid Miller’s lawsuit was sponsored by America First Legal — a group founded by Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s former senior adviser, along with other Trump officials and intended to be a conservative response to the ACLU.
Miller’s complaint against the U.S. Department of Agriculture claimed the definition in Biden’s program failed to include “white ethnic groups that have unquestionably suffered” because of their ethnicity, such as those of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish and eastern European heritage.
The Biden-Harris administration did not give up. As reported by Forbes, in August 2024… “The Biden administration started its distribution of $2 billion to thousands of farmers who have faced decades of government-backed discrimination. For nearly a century, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) limited these farmers’ access to federal subsidies, debt forgiveness and other programs that served as lifeline for a majority-white farmer base. The long-awaited payout, created through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, comes after nearly two years of delays, court challenges and pushback from mostly GOP-elected lawmakers (and white farmers).”
As Senator, then vice-president Harris was involved in and casting tie breaking votes to get this legislation through.
Harris’ choice of Tim Waltz as her vice-president tells me that she intends to hold the USDA accountable. Since Waltz served on the Agricultural Committee in Congress, he knows the path to recovering the billions that black farmer’s lost when Trump’s MAGA crowd tried to stop these funds from getting to black farmer’s and their families.
PS. The reason I followed this legislation for last 25 years is because it impacted three of my neighboring ranchers in California and two of my neighboring farmers here in Kentucky. For our communities, this is really important stuff.
One last comment about why these farmers are so important. While urban Americans have been screaming about bacon prices, we've been paying $1.99 a pound.
The reason is kind of simple, when your butcher and your grocer buys local, they eliminate all the costs of auction houses, middle-men, truckers, cold storage facilities, slaughter houses, CEO salaries and shareholder profits. My butcher and grocer pay more to the farmer and still makes a tidy profit. He also gets the pick of all the herds around here. $1.99 a pound for bacon, ham, sausages, turkeys, and roasts smoked right outside the butcher shop. Chicken prices range from .99 cents to $3.49 a pound. This week our butcher’s Rib eye steaks were $8.97 a pound (and $15.87 a pound at Walmart). Better yet, the butcher trims the fat just right, so you pay for flavour – not inedible chunks of fat and grizzle. Sometimes I make a trip in the opposite direction where another butcher specializes in pork, and I can get ham hocks and ox tails.
Our farmer’s market is always full of fresh picked fruits and produce that I do not grow in my own garden - and NO middle men or CEOs waiting for their share of profits and no share of work at all.
