Champion Farmer Equity & Justice for Black Farmers

Background

The U.S. is built on a long history of disenfranchisement and land theft, which continues to have significant repercussions today. The legalized enslavement of Black people built the U.S. economy,^[1] and yet, with few exceptions, formerly enslaved people and their descendants have seen little of the country’s wealth. In fact, gains in land ownership by Black Southerners following the Civil War were erased over the following century, mostly through threats, violence, and systemic discrimination, including by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) itself.^[2] In 1910, Black farmers accounted for 20 percent of farmers^[3]; by 2017, that number had dropped to 1.3 percent.^[4] Black land ownership has plummeted by 98 percent in the last century, with most of the loss occurring not in the late 1800s, but just since the 1950s.^[5]

In the last few years, policy efforts have been introduced at the federal and state levels to address this long legacy. The federal Justice for Black Farmers Act is a landmark proposal that would address access to land, training, credit, and much more for Black and other socially disadvantaged farmers, along with systemic changes to level the playing field for all farmers. State policymakers across the country have drawn on parts of this legislation to develop and organize around a variety of state-level reforms. A movement is also growing in legislatures to secure the legal rights of heirs property holders,^[6],[7] an issue that impacts not just Black rural landholders but numerous other disenfranchised property-holders as well.^[8],[9] From securing funding in state budgets for Black farmers to bills that uplift stories and narratives of Black farmers, working toward restorative racial justice can happen in many ways.