by Anaradha Mittal with Joan Powell
In November 1992, Melvin Bishop's farm in Georgia suffered severe damage from a tornado. After the storm, Bishop went to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to apply for disaster relief, an emergency loan, and an operating loan. For the next seven months, the local USDA office gave him the runaround. Finally, in May 1993, Bishop not only was denied the disaster relief he qualified for, he was also denied both loans. No reasons were given. Bishop, who is African-American, called his experience with the USDA "even more devastating than the tornado."
Georgian farmer Melvin Bishop. |
Bishop's situation is not unique. Hundreds of black farmers have filed administrative complaints or lawsuits charging USDA loan officials with discouraging, delaying, or rejecting loan applications on the basis of race. These charges have been upheld by federal officials. This discrimination, the farmers believe, is a major reason that the nation's already tiny corps of Black farmers is shrinking at three times the rate of farmers nationwide.
Despite the fact that the US has ratified the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights iand the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, discrimination against black farmers continues -- even in the midst of a booming economy.
The Perennial Crop of Bias
In 1865, the US Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and, soon thereafter, passed the Freedmen's Bureau Act, which leased 40 acres of abandoned or confiscated Southern land to "every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman."
Unfortunately, these plans for the redistribution of Southern lands were never carried out. After the war, President Andrew Johnson returned the land to white aristocrats, ensuring the persistence of the South's semi-feudal economic order.
In 1920, nearly one million African-American farmers owned 14 percent of all US farms. By 1950, Black land ownership had declined to 12 million acres, and in 1969 it was down to 5.5 million acres -- a drop of 54 percent in just 20 years. Between 1982 and 1992, the number of black farmers in the US fell 43 percent -- from 33,250 to 18,816.
In 1990, African Americans made up roughly one percent of the nation's farmers and were disappearing at a rate almost five times greater than whites. In 1999, fewer than 18,000 out of 1.9 million US farmers were African Americans, and these farmers owned less than 1 million acres. A 1990 Congressional report warned that black farms were on the verge of extinction. It is now feared that, by the end of 2000, there may be no black-owned land in America.
In 1982, the US Commission on Civil Rights concluded that the primary reason African-American farmers had lost land was because of the USDA itself. In 1990, Congress authorized spending $10 million annually under the Minority Farmers Rights Act to address this problem. But not once in the past nine years was the full $10 million awarded: Black farmers have been shortchanged by over $50 million.
The US Civil Rights Commission studied the problem in the 1980s and concluded that black farmers wait longer for loan decisions and are more likely to be rejected than white farmers. USDA investigators found that white farmers typically waited 84 days for loan decisions, while black farmers wait an average 222 days. While 84 percent of the white applicants had their loans applications approved, only 56 percent of the black applicants received loans. As a result, each day black farmers lose 1,000 acres of land.
An April 1997 report by the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) revealed that 91.4 percent of 1997 farm loans went to white farmers, 4.2 percent to Hispanic farmers, 2.3 percent to black farmers, and 1.2 percent to Native Americans.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has acknowledged that "small farmers in general, and African American farmers in particular, are having a harder time keeping their land." A federal Civil Rights Action Team developed 92 recommendations to reform USDA practices but, to date, the vast majority have yet to be implemented.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan cut the USDA budget and eliminated its civil rights complaint division. Instead of informing black farmers that the complaint division had been abolished, local USDA officials instructed desperate farmers whose loan requests had been denied to send their complaints with Washington. The complaints simply piled up in a vacant room in the Agriculture building.
In 1997, more than 1,000 black farmers filed a class-action lawsuit against the USDA seeking $3 billion in compensation. In January 1999, the USDA and attorneys for the farmers reached a $375 million out-of-court settlement that called for forgiveness of the plaintiffs' government debts and a one-time tax-free $50,000 disbursement to each farmer.
Many of the farmers were unhappy with the settlement since it did nothing to solve their fundamental problems. The average debt for farmers in the lawsuit was $75,000 to $100,000. "Giving the farmers $50,000 does not make up for acres lost," says Winston Monk, who saw his farm put up for auction. "In many cases, farmers have no land to leave to their children and grandchildren." Monk's farm, assessed at $237,000, was picked up for $88,000 by Harry Wass -- an agent representing the USDA. (African-American farmers claim that 53 percent of USDA's current inventory of land holdings formerly belonged to Black farmers.)
Because the agreement failed to force the USDA to permanently stop discrimination in loans and assistance, Black farmers from 22 states rejected the settlement as "a betrayal, a sabotage, and the final nail in the coffin of the black farmer and land owner."
"There is no justice in this consent decree," argues BFAA Vice President Eddie Slaughter, since the same biased officials would still be in office. "The $50,000 payment won't even buy a good used tractor. And it does nothing about the land that has been taken from us."
Stephan Bowens, a lawyer for the Land Loss Fund, noted that African-American farmers with approved claims still are not receiving the debt relief promised by the USDA. Systemic changes still have not taken place in the USDA to eliminate discrimination against disadvantaged farmers (the rejection rate still tops 40 percent). The USDA still is still not returning land to black farmers from its inventory.
In the words of Ralph Paige, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, "Many of our ancestors lost their lives to own land, to earn a living from the land, to raise their families in the richness of the Southern rural culture that is distinctly our own. Help us hold on to this important and valuable resource. We have a right to this land!"
For more information, contact: Economic Human Rights: The Time Has Come! Campaign [Food First, 398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618, (510) 654-4400, www.foodfirst.org]; Federation of Southern Cooperatives [2769 Church Street, Eastpoint, GA 30344, (404) 765-0991]; Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association [PO Box 597, Buena Vista, GA 31803].
Anaradha Mittal is Co-Director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy. Joan Powell is an intern with IFDP.
The Last Plantation: Black-owned Farms Face Extinction in the US