That translates to a decrease from about 14 percent to around 1 percent of farms in America. And no one can blame incompetence or disinterest as the primary reasons for disappearing black-owned farms. Instead, discrimination by the United States Government is at least a large part of the reason many of these farms failed.Even a jury said so by ruling against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and for black farmers who filed a groundbreaking class-action lawsuit against the government in 1999. The result of the Pigford lawsuit established that the USDA practiced racial discrimination by denying loans to black farmers who in turn were forced into foreclosure. The USDA was far more liberal in granting loans to white farmers. ...
And the remedy seemed like a good one.
Black farmers who demonstrated even minimal evidence of discriminatory treatment at the hands of the USDA between 1981 and 1996 would be entitled to a cash payment of $50,000, debt forgiveness (and potentially more money in specific instances), and preferential treatment on future loans.
Unfortunately, problems distributing the money cropped up right away. And critics say that the settlement has not helped many of the black farmers who brought the suit. The Daily Yonder lays it out this way:
"At that point, the successful class action suit began to frazzle. The Department was hardly aggressive in processing discrimination claims. After extensions of deadlines due to insufficient notice to black farmers, the end results were still shocking: 81,000 out of 94,000 black farmers filing for restitution were rejected. Under a court-ordered extension of the time limits for eligibility, nearly 66,000 farmers were reviewed, but only 2,131 assisted. Not only have black farmers received little of the estimated $3 to 4 billion value of the settlement, but patterns of insufficient support to minority farmers appear to continue. Statistics show that the subsidy gap between black farmers and white farmers is widening post-Pigford."
But help may be on the way. Barack Obama has been a steadfast supporter of black farmers and thanks to the farm bill passed in May, more than 70,000 potential claimants could receive as much as $3 billion. That's much more than what was allotted in the original agreement in 1999.
1. Thank you very much for bringing us to date on this issue. We forget about the Black farmers here in America as we focus on issues in Haiti, Darfur or Tibet...
peace, Villager
Villager at 1:25PM on Jul 3rd 2008