The Great Black Dispossession : Article Sections

On December 8, 2020, US President-elect Joe Biden chose Tom Vilsack to head the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Vilsack had served as USDA Secretary under President Obama. Black farmers were outraged. One farmer, Michael Stovall, founder of Independent Black Farmers, said of Vilsack, “When it comes to civil rights, the rights of people, he’s not for that. It’s very disappointing they even want to consider him coming back after what he has done to limited resource farmers and what he continues to do to destroy lives.” Black farmers’ disappointment with Vilsack’s selection was compounded by the fact that Biden’s campaign specifically courted Black farmers more than any in recent years. Biden’s decision, however, can be seen as the continuation of century-long US agricultural policies that have played an instrumental role in one of the greatest overlooked civil rights issues in American history: the loss of Black farmland in the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Origins of Black Land Loss: 1865 to 1920

On January 12, 1865, US General William Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton met with 20 Black ministers at a mansion in Savannah, Georgia, and asked what they wanted for their people after the war. Their answer was simple – land. Four days later, on January 16, 1865, Sherman issued his now famous Special Field Order No. 15, which designated 400,000 acres on the coast of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida to be parceled out to formerly enslaved Black families on 40-acre plots. Sherman later authorized the army to loan mules to these families. Black families began to settle on the land. In Fall 1865, US President Andrew Johnson revoked Sherman’s field orders and the Black settlers were forced to give the land back to the previous owners – rice planters. The promise of “forty acres and a mule” had been killed.

By 1920, there were 925,000 Black-owned farms in the United States – 14 percent of all American farms. This marked the height of Black land ownership in the United States.

This, however, did not stop Black Americans from acquiring land in the decades immediately after the US Civil War. In 1862, the US Congress passed the Homestead Act, giving out land stolen from Indigenous Americans to white settlers. With the ratification of the 14th amendment in 1868, Black Americans became eligible for this land as well, albeit heavily restricted. Less than 6,000 Black homesteaders received plots. Furthermore, many white farmers on the East Coast headed West to take advantage of the Homestead Act, selling their land to Black families. Passed in 1866, the Southern Homestead Act made land available to Black Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi in 80-acre and then 160-acre plots. While this land overwhelmingly went to whites, some Black Americans got land as well. That is, until Congress repealed the Southern Homestead Act in 1876, bowing to white Southern opposition. By 1910, Black Americans owned as many as 16 million acres of land. By 1920, there were 925,000 Black-owned farms in the United States – 14 percent of all American farms. This marked the height of Black land ownership in the United States.

The Great Black Dispossession

The total value of Black farmland lost since 1920 is estimated to be US$326 billion.

Between 1910 and 1997, however, Black-owned farmland was slashed 90 percent. Meanwhile, white farmland ownership was where it was at the beginning of the century. The total value of Black farmland lost since 1920 is estimated to be US$326 billion – with most of the losses being in the South and California. The decline in Black farmers has been equally precipitous – plummeting 98 percent from 1900 to 1997.

Today, despite being almost 14 percent of the US population, Black Americans own less than one percent of the nation’s farmland and constitute two percent of farmers and one percent of rural landowners. How did this massive yet seldom spoken about dispossession occur?

The Great Black Dispossession was carried out systematically through every possible channel.

Jim Crow, White Mob Violence, and Eminent Domain

After the Civil War, some US states passed laws banning Black Americans from owning land or forming financial organizations, which stymied efforts by Black churches to pool money to help Black Americans buy land. County assessors often inflated the appraisal of Black land to drive up property taxes, forcing the family to sell or inducing a “tax sale” – auctioning the land for failure to pay property taxes. Local officials sometimes threatened violence against Black landowners if they did not abandon their holdings. In the early 20th century, Black landowners were targeted for lynchings by covetous white neighbors and violent white mobs, terrorizing the family and other nearby Black landowners into leaving their property, which was then auctioned at below market value.  

At the local, state, and federal levels, officials used eminent domain to procure Black land for public purposes, compensating them below market value. Uses for the land included, but were not limited to, building Southern public universities and Southern beaches. In 1910, substantial portions of Black farmland were on the coasts, then seen as the least desirable territory. In the 20th century, the US Army Corps of Engineers converted many coastlines into “flood protection” zones and beaches, which the US government then connected to the rest of the country via highways, leading to an influx of white vacationers. Black landowners had their land taken through eminent domain or were relegated to the most polluted areas of the shore. Sometimes Black land was obtained for public projects that never even happened.

“Heirs’ Property”

Since heirs’ property lacks official titles, heirs cannot get mortgages, make substantial repairs on the property, apply for state and federal housing assistance, or apply for almost any USDA program.

One of the biggest causes of Black land loss has been the “heirs’ property” phenomenon. 81 percent of Black landowners after the Civil War died without wills as they lacked legal assistance. Without an “estate plan” – what happens to the land after the owner dies – descendants inherit an “interest” in the land, and the property becomes “heirs’ property.” Since heirs’ property lacks official titles, heirs cannot get mortgages, make substantial repairs on the property, apply for state and federal housing assistance, or apply for almost any USDA program. As the generations pass, the heirs’ property’s “interest” is divided among an increasing number of heirs who may not even know they own it or know the other heirs since they can be so numerous. Under the law, one heir can request that the entire plot be auctioned, initiating a “partition sale.”

Property developers use this legal loophole to their advantage, approaching a distant relative who may not even know they own any interest in heirs’ property and convincing them to sell it at far below market value. The developer – who now controls the interest in the land – brings the entire plot of land to auction, outbids the entire family, and gets the land.

The New Deal and the US Farm Bill

The displacement of Black farmers was not just a convenient byproduct of the New Deal programs from the perspective of white Southerners, but the explicit purpose.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” policies that led to massive consolidation of farmland into wealthy white hands also fueled the Great Black Dispossession. The 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) – America’s first “farm bill” – was, according to former Farm Service Agency (FSA) administrator Jonathan Coppess, “designed and used intentionally to help southern cotton planters push poor Black sharecroppers off the land and consolidate their holdings.” The US government paid farmers – mainly large landowners – to curtail production in order to keep prices high. Southern planters used this money to purchase tractors and other heavy equipment to outcompete small farmers, including Black farmers. With production cut and less hands needed in the fields due to mechanization, white planters pushed out Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers, many of whom migrated to cities – a major overlooked contributor to the US Great Migration. The displacement of Black farmers was not just a convenient byproduct of the New Deal programs from the perspective of white Southerners, but the explicit purpose. The founder of the Citizens’ Council – a network of white supremacist organizations in the South – reportedly devised a plan to remove 200,000 Black people from Mississippi by 1966 with “the tractor, the mechanized cotton picker… and the decline of the small independent farmers.” At the same time, lawmakers attacked programs that assisted small farmers such as the Farm Security Administration as “communistic,” “un-American,” or making Black farmers into “wards of the government.” The main reason Southern white elites were so successful in using New Deal programs to further their white supremacist agenda is that Southern planters got these programs to be run locally by elected county committees, often racist white Southerners. County committees used their power to direct money in the form of subsidies, loans, and other financial assistance by the USDA to white planters, while denying those funds to Black farmers. The increased role of the USDA in American agricultural life since the New Deal has also made farmers dependent on the department’s funds, which are essential for building and improving infrastructure, purchasing farm equipment, and recovering from natural disasters, for instance. From 1929 to 1940, federal dollars as a percent of farm income increased from three percent to 31 percent.

Further entrenching the dominance of wealthy planters, farm bills over subsequent decades removed many of the price controls that kept small farmers afloat. In 1954, under President Eisenhower, the USDA lowered New Deal price floors, ending corn production controls in 1959. Under President Kennedy, the 1962 Farm Bill included production controls only for wheat. Even this was eliminated after a referendum by wheat farmers in 1963. President Lyndon Johnson bragged that his farm bill would slash crop prices “to the lowest possible cost.” While all farmers suffered from decreased prices, large landowners weathered this storm. Small farmers could not. In the 1970s, the farm bill stopped attempting to raise prices. From 1950 to 1974, Black farmers – most of whom were small farmers – lost two thirds of their land. US politicians lacked the political will to address the disappearance of America’s small farmers, as proposals for land redistribution or collective farming were attacked as communist. The result has been the massive decline of US farms from 1920 to today.

During the 1980s farm crisis – two main causes being interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve in 1979 and the US grain embargo on the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1981 after its invasion of Afghanistan – prices fell and farmers’ debts soared, forcing farmers to sell their land as they were unable to repay banks.

“The Last Plantation”

Farmers’ increased reliance on USDA funds made pervasive discrimination by the department devastating for Black farmers. Numerous government reports have found significant lending discrimination by the USDA. This includes two reports by the US Commission on Civil Rights in 1965 and 1982, a Congressional report from 1990, a USDA report from 1997, six Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports from 1999 to 2009, and an independently commissioned study in 2011. Discrimination has taken many forms, the most obvious forms being outright denial of loans. Another common tactic is to delay the approval and disbursement of loans until planting was over, forcing Black farmers to turn to local banks with high interest rates to finance their planting, leading to massive debt and in many cases, eventual foreclosure and sale of the land. In some cases, there has been direct collusion between local bankers, USDA officials, and white farmers to drive Black farmers off their land. Another tactic is to falsify farm statistics to record lower yields for Black farmers seeking loans, which would be used as justification for loan denial. Sometimes, even if a loan is approved, the funds are never disbursed.

USDA’s civil rights branch has been at best powerless to stop this discrimination and at worst complicit in it.

Making matters worse, the USDA’s civil rights branch has been at best powerless to stop this discrimination and at worst complicit in it. Even when directors of the civil rights office have had positive reform ideas – such as the office’s first director, William Seabron – their recommendations were largely ignored by USDA officials. In 1983, President Reagan eliminated the USDA Office on Civil Rights entirely. Staffers later said they “simply threw discrimination complaints in the trash without ever responding to or investigating them.” Knowing full well that the office had been eliminated, local USDA officials continued to assure Black farmers that they could submit discrimination complaints to Washington, where they joined a pile of other complaints in a vacant room at USDA headquarters.

Compounding the sabotage of the civil rights office was US Representative Jamie Whitten, who served as Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture largely uninterrupted from 1949 to 1992, and Chairman of the US House Appropriations Committee – in charge of how much funding is allocated to federal programs – from 1978 to 1992. A Mississippi segregationist, Whitten used his power over USDA funding and staff to ensure that federal departments did not publish studies on Black farmers and rural racial inequality and to kill programs that he thought could help Black Southerners. In Congress, Whitten secured millions in federal funds for wealthy planters in his district, while advocating against expanding food stamps by arguing that if “hunger is not a problem, n***** won’t work.” Whitten’s enormous influence over the USDA gave him the nickname, the “Permanent Secretary,” with former USDA Secretary Orville Freeman noting that he had “two bosses. One is President Johnson. The other is Jamie Whitten.” In 1994, the USDA building that houses the office of civil rights was renamed the Jamie Whitten Building.

In 1996, the Clinton administration revived the USDA Office on Civil Rights, which, in 2002, Congress renamed the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (OASCR). Under the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, OASCR was sabotaged by its leadership. During the Bush administration, according to one employee, “They routinely put the complaints in the corner and ignored them until the statute of limitations ran out.” By the end of the Bush years, there was a backlog of 14,000 discrimination complaints. In some instances, managers reportedly ordered employees to destroy disregarded complaints and civil rights files.

By the end of the Obama administration, Secretary Tom Vilsack and OASCR director Joe Leonard frequently asserted that under their tenure there had been a 70 percent decline in discrimination complaints. According to one former employee, Leonard was “basically padding the numbers in each state, saying the numbers had gone down, when our data was showing something different.” Two former high level OASCR officials said Leonard pressured them and other supervisors to fudge the numbers to show decreased discrimination complaints against the USDA. Several former employees said it was widely known that Leonard’s numbers were wrong. In the words of another, “Everyone knew they were lying.”

According to a former USDA employee, who served under the Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, OASCR managers’ objective was to get through as many cases as possible, without investigating them closely. Those that attempted to thoroughly investigate discrimination claims – in other words, do their job – risked being sidelined by supervisors. Often, the local USDA officials accused of discrimination are the ones who control the relevant files for the case. Under Vilsack, OASCR managers directed some cases to Washington solely to reject them to give an appearance of progress for promotions and bonuses. According to Lloyd Wright, former director of the Office of Civil Rights under Clinton, OASCR tries to dismiss cases on any technicality and seeks to not accept cases to begin with. One major reason is that the USDA’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) has been heavily involved in the adjudication of discrimination complaints since the late 2000s. OGC frequently pressures OASCR to reduce the number of claims per case and to weaken and dismiss as many cases as possible. According to Leonard, OGC makes “all the decisions.”

Lloyd Wright returned to the USDA during the Obama administration to go through the backlog of 14,000 discrimination complaints from the Bush era. He found 4,000 cases that had merit, but most of which had gone past the two-year statute of limitations. He got the US House of Representatives to twice pass bills to extend the statute of limitations. According to Wright, all Vilsack needed to do was call a couple US Senators and the bills would pass. Vilsack never called. Moreover, the USDA foreclosed on farmers whose discrimination cases had not been extended. The 2008 farm bill included a moratorium on foreclosing on farmers with outstanding discrimination cases. To get around this, USDA officials looked to exclude some Black farmers from this moratorium on what Wright considered dubious grounds. From 2006 to 2016, Black farmers were six times more likely to be foreclosed on than white farmers. Under Obama, a fewer share of USDA loans went to Black farmers than under Bush.

The Trump administration allowed most discrimination complaints to expire without investigation. In 2015, an email account was created for farmers to make discrimination complaints. However, in 2017, it was revealed that only one third of these emails had been opened, prompting a frantic catch-up in 2018. In 2020, 71 percent of loan applications by white farmers were approved, compared to 37 percent for Black farmers. The most cited reason for lower Black loan application approval rates is bad credit, which is in large part a direct result of decades of USDA discrimination. The percent of USDA direct loans going to Black farmers has declined since 2015. With Vilsack back at the helm under the Biden administration, in 2022, 72 percent of loan applications by white farmers were approved, double the rate of 36 percent for Black farmers. The history of discrimination at the USDA has led Black farmers to refer to the department as “the Last Plantation.”

Black Farmer Resistance, Pigford, and the Denial of Justice

In the face of these challenges, there has been substantial activism by Black farmers over the decades. In 1967, 22 Black-led cooperatives created the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which engages in advocacy and provides technical assistance to Black farmers. In 1972, Robert Browne founded the Emergency Land Fund, which has conducted extensive research on Black land loss. In 1990, the Farmers Legal Action Group (FLAG) sued the USDA for discrimination, although they were unsuccessful in making it a class action lawsuit.

Despite the USDA being required in the settlement to cancel debts of farmers with successful discrimination claims, only 2.7 percent of claimants, 425 farmers, received debt relief.

In April 1997, Black farmers testified before the Congressional Black Caucus, stating that the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) tried to put them out of business by delaying loans and foreclosing on their farms. Four months later, Timothy Pigford and 400 Black farmers sued the USDA in Pigford v. Glickman – alleging USDA discrimination from 1981 to 1996. In 1999, the USDA settled the lawsuit, eventually paying out US$50,000 to more than 13,000 farmers, totaling over US$1 billion. Many Black farmers found this unacceptable because US$50,000 was insufficient to cover farmers’ debts or reclaim lost land. Furthermore, the USDA was not required to return wrongfully taken land or punish discriminatory employees. While around 13,000 claimants received compensation, 90 percent of the over 94,000 Black farmers who submitted claims received nothing. 64,000 claims were rejected by the arbitrator for missing the original filing deadline, even though they were submitted within the “late claims” period established by the court. Another 7,800 were rejected because they were submitted after this “late claims” period. Another 9,000 claims were denied despite meeting basic qualifications for compensation. This is likely in part because of 56,000 staff hours and US$12 million spent by the US Department of Justice under Bush to fight claims, dismissing cases on any technicality. Despite the USDA being required in the settlement to cancel USDA debts of farmers with successful discrimination claims, only 2.7 percent of claimants, 425 farmers, received debt relief. This debt relief was finalized in 2012, nearly a decade and a half after the settlement, during which time Black farmers became more heavily indebted.

Adding insult to injury, the Black farmers’ lawyers reportedly ripped off and betrayed their clients – going through farmers’ petitions far behind schedule and withdrawing petitions to go through them more quickly. The 2008 farm bill allowed additional farmers to file claims under Pigford v. Glickman, leading to a second round of settlements in 2010, known as “Pigford II” – 17,000 claims totaling US$1.25 billion. Like their Bush counterparts, Obama’s Department of Justice lawyers spent millions fighting claims. After Pigford II, the USDA agreed to provide foreclosure relief, priority consideration for future loans, access to the USDA’s land inventory, and billions to cancel the wrongful debt and interest charges resulting from discrimination. They never followed through on this agreement. Worse still, many Black farmers, told by their lawyers they would be receiving debt relief under Pigford II, bought equipment and infrastructure. As the debt relief never came, they became more indebted than before.

In March 2023, the advocacy group Justice For Black Farmers descended upon Washington DC and protested outside the White House, demanding that President Biden and Secretary Vilsack fulfill their promises to Black farmers. The March 2023 protest was one of many such demonstrations by Black farmers in the US capital over the decades, including in 1992, 1996, 1997, and 2002.

Positive Steps and Tentative Optimism Amidst Overarching Disappointment

While far from the transformative policies needed to truly address Black farmland dispossession, there have been some reforms. In 1990, Congress authorized US$10 million (some US$23.5 million today) to be allocated per year for outreach, education, and technical assistance to Black farmers and farmers from other marginalized groups. However, in ten years, US$50 million of this funding was not spent. The 2018 Farm Bill created the Heirs Property Relending Program, creating an alternative avenue for heirs’ property holders to receive a farm number, required to apply for loans. The program also includes helping heirs clear titles, buy other relatives’ interests in the heirs’ property, and make estate plans. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) included US$1 billion for outreach and assistance to “socially disadvantaged farmers” – which include Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous American, and Pacific Islander farmers – and formed an Equity Commission to review “systemic discrimination” at the USDA as well as its policies that create “barriers to inclusion or access” or exacerbate racial, economic, and gender inequality.

“They’re doing [the same thing] with discrimination payments now. You don’t try to correct something, and the people that did it – you put them back in there – They’re gonna get vindictive. They don’t like the idea they got caught.”

ARPA also allocated US$4 billion to pay off up to 120 percent of outstanding USDA loans for “socially disadvantaged farmers.” White farmers, with financial backing from conservative and libertarian groups, filed at least 13 lawsuits alleging that the debt relief program discriminated against them. In June 2021, federal judges blocked the program on those grounds. Biden’s Department of Justice chose not to appeal the decision. John Boyd Jr. – founder of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) – expressed extreme disappointment, as did other Black farmers. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) replaced the ARPA program with a US$3.1 billion program for USDA loan adjustments and debt relief to “distressed” borrowers, as well as US$2.2 billion for farmers who experienced lending discrimination by the FSA. Many Black farmers, including Boyd were upset that the program did not target minority farmers directly: “I’m very, very disappointed in this legislative action.” As of January 30, 2023, 13,000 farmers received payments. According to an analysis, under the IRA program, “Historically Underserved Operators” will receive an average of US$1,775 per farmer, compared to US$3,000 per farmer had the ARPA program been kept in place. Other farmers were upset that the IRA program did not address the root causes of USDA discrimination. As one farmer put it, “They’re doing [the same thing] with discrimination payments now. You don’t try to correct something, and the people that did it – you put them back in there – They’re gonna get vindictive. They don’t like the idea they got caught.”

Formed in February 2022, the Equity Commission created by ARPA has since released two major reports – an Interim Report in 2023 and a Final Report in February 2024 – with over 60 recommendations. These include more funding to clear titles as they pertain to heirs property, increased technical assistance to underserved farmers, reforming the FSA to ensure eligibility criteria for USDA programs are clearly stated, increased minority representation on county committees, submitting the annual civil rights compliance reviews mandated by the 2008 Farm Bill, conducting Equity Audits by third parties every five years, and creating an Office of Small Farms to ensure small farmers have access to USDA programs.

However, transformative reform proposals in the US Congress to implement some of these recommendations have gained little traction. In early 2023, US Representative Alma Adams and US Senator Cory Booker reintroduced the Justice for Black Farmers Act (JBFA), which would create an independent board to oversee civil rights at the USDA, including OASCR and county committees; prohibit the USDA from foreclosing on farmers with pending civil rights complaints; forgive USDA debt for Pigford claimants; increase funding for the Heirs Property Relending Program and other legal assistance to clear titles and create estate plans; form a new agency to provide land grants of up to 160 acres to Black farmers; create a Farm Conservation Corps to help socially disadvantaged youth pursue agricultural careers; provide funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) for agricultural research and farmer trainings; and give first priority to socially disadvantaged farmers for a handful of conservation and energy efficiency programs.

Senator Booker previously introduced JBFA in 2020 and 2021. The bill has never passed the US Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. In both 2021 and 2023, JBFA’s partner bills in the US House were assigned to five committees apiece, a common tactic employed by US House Speakers to bury bills they disapprove of, in this case by former Speakers Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy respectively. That said, some have expressed optimism that JBFA could be included in the 2024 Farm Bill still under negotiation.

Since 2011, 21 states, Washington DC, and the US Virgin Islands have sought to address the  heirs’ property issue by passing the Uniform Partition of Heirs’ Property Act (UPHPA), which gives heirs more power to fight land grabs through partition sales. Specifically, UPHPA requires that if a partition sale is requested, the other heirs are notified and can buy out the requester’s “interest” to stave off the sale. The act also ensures that if a partition sale does occur, the land is sold at market value.

While these are positive reforms, UPHPA is not retroactive in many states, meaning that Black land lost due to heirs’ property will remain lost.

Black Land Loss Today: The USDA’s Disingenuous Victory Lap

Amid these changes, many have optimistically pointed to USDA figures from the Census of Agriculture (COA) that purportedly show that Black land loss has reversed in recent decades. For instance, in 2017, it was widely publicized that in the preceding five years, the number of Black farmers had increased nine percent. Furthermore, official USDA data suggests that Black farmland acreage has been steadily rising in the past decade, growing from 3.6 million acres in 2012 to 5.3 million acres in 2022. However, there is reason to doubt these optimistic statistics. 

In 1997, Congress gave the USDA control of carrying out the COA, which was previously administered by the US Census Bureau. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, to account for severe historical undercounting of Black farmers in the COA, “in 2002, the USDA began applying statistical adjustments to its published data to account for missing or nonresponding farms and has continued to refine its methodology in each successive COA.” In 2017, 60 percent of the Black farms and 53 percent of the Black farmland included in the COA’s figures can be attributed to these statistical adjustments, rather than the raw data, compared to 37 percent and 23 percent for white farms and white farmland respectively. Additionally, since 2002 – the year of the first COA conducted by the USDA – the USDA has greatly ramped up its outreach to Black farmers to increase responsiveness. Furthermore, before 1997, the COA counted a maximum of one farmer per farm, usually the male head of household. Since the USDA was given control, the COA has counted other household members as well. While these reforms have likely made the COA more accurate, comparing more recent adjusted figures to previous unadjusted figures is misleading. 

“They just lie, lie, lie, and lie, that’s all they do… to make them and the government look good…”

In reference to the 2017 COA indicating a rise in Black farmers, Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association President Gary Grant stated, “They just lie, lie, lie, and lie, that’s all they do… to make them and the government look good… And to try to keep the attention off of what the actual problems are.” Grant is very active in Halifax County, North Carolina, where according to the COA, the number of Black farmers increased from 51 to 68 from 2007 to 2012. Halifax County Black farmer, Haywood Harrell, said of the USDA’s figures on Black farmers, “I know that’s not right. Find ’em. Go find ’em.” He estimated that in 2007 and 2012, Black farmers in the county numbered 25 and 12 respectively, and said that there were fewer Black farmers in his community than ever. He and Grant added that while they knew a small group of Black farmers when they were younger, now, most of those Black farmers are gone and those that remain are fighting to hold onto their land, often against the USDA. Grant remembered his father telling him on his deathbed, “Do not let USDA take my land.”

According to two researchers who conducted a two-year long investigation into the 2017 COA’s findings, Grant and Harrell’s account was “uncannily similar” to those of many other Black farmers they spoke to, who also said that the number of Black farmers was dwindling in their communities. Lloyd Wright, skeptical of the USDA’s official numbers as well, reportedly conducted spot checks in counties in which the 2017 COA reported an increase in Black farmers, finding that reality did not match what the COA was saying. Ben Burkett, State Coordinator of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives, said of Black farmers, “They already was out there. There ain’t no new ones… They just countin’ them better. That’s my bit.” The researchers conclude that the reported rise in Black farmers in the 2017 COA was because of changes in the counting, and that from 2012 to 2017, “the number of Black farmers almost certainly declined.” The USDA’s misleading data has real political consequences for Black farmers fighting to keep their land. As Lloyd Wright puts it, “It’s hard to convince people on [Capitol] Hill that they should take initiatives… for Black farmers… when the statistics would indicate that they are one of the few groups that are increasing.”

The Great Black Dispossession Continues

From 1992 to 2002, 94 percent of Black farmers lost part or all of their farmland, three times the rate of white farmers. While heirs’ properties are receiving more attention and legislative remedies, they are still vulnerable to being bought by developers. NPR estimates that half of Black land is heirs’ property. Furthermore, 60 percent of Black landowners do not have an estate plan. Today, Black farmers – like other farmers – face many converging problems. Farmers’ input costs – land, fuel, and fertilizer – are surging. It is difficult to find farm labor. Crop insurance is becoming more expensive, increasing in price 8.5 percent annually from 2006 to 2015, in part due to climate change. Farmers’ debts are growing. Farmers are under mounting pressure to sell their land to developers, investment firms, large landowners, and oil and gas companies.

MFP provided an average of US$10,674 to white farmers compared to US$1,074 for Black farmers, while CFAP disbursed an average of US$3,398 to white farmers compared to US$422 for Black farmers.

The federal government continues to give large farms even more means with which to drive small farms out of business. Farm subsidies exploded under the Trump administration to a record high of US$46 billion in 2020 as a result to two new programs: the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) compensated farmers who suffered from President Trump’s trade war with China and the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) provided COVID relief to farmers. This recent surge in subsidies has primarily served large farms, whose payouts shot up 31 percent from 2017 to 2022, while those to smaller farms barely budged. Furthermore, MFP provided an average of US$10,674 to white farmers compared to US$1,074 for Black farmers, while CFAP disbursed an average of US$3,398 to white farmers compared to US$422 for Black farmers. These figures have likely widened the so-called “subsidy gap” between white and Black farmers that had already grown over the previous decade due to ballooning federal crop insurance subsidies, further enabling larger white farms to outcompete smaller Black farmers.

Given the many challenges Black farmers face today – the remaining structural racism at the USDA, the ongoing pressures of federally-funded farmland consolidation, and the remaining vulnerability of heirs’ property – Black farm loss is not set to end any time soon. The federal government – having played a key role in creating the Black farm loss crisis, will have to play an even bigger role in reversing it. This must start with passing the Justice for Black Farmers Act and a nationwide Uniform Partition of Heirs’ Property Act (UPHPA). Furthermore, the US Congress must reduce subsidies going to large farmers and provide Black farmers with restitution in the form of debt relief, compensation for lost loans and financial assistance, and land redistribution.

The shattering of Black farmland ownership over the past century is yet another example in US history of those in power obstructing Black socioeconomic mobility at every turn. This great dispossession of Black farmland is ongoing, but not without resistance from Black farmers and their families, who – despite efforts by the US government, developers, violent white neighbors, and large landowners to take everything away from them – have refused to give up on their dream, an immortal dream of a people which began with the promise of “forty acres and a mule” more than 150 years ago.