BY SUSAN LAMONT AND RONALD MARTIN
MILESTON, Mississippi - David Howard, 40, is president of
the Mileston Co-op, and an enthusiastic activist for the rights
of Black farmers. He and his cousin, R.C. Howard, recently
welcomed Militant reporters at the co-op's new office, a few
miles down the road from Tchula (see article on facing page).
The Mileston Co-op, they explained, is the oldest Black farm cooperative in the United States. It was formed in 1942 and chartered in 1944; the Howards' grandfather was one of the founders. The purpose of the cooperative is to help small farmers get a better deal on seed, chemicals, and other products by buying in quantity. During the 1970s and '80s, the cooperative also helped members participate in a government program to supply farmers with cattle. With the price of cattle and hogs so low, most co-op members have since decided to stick with cotton and soybeans, David explained.
Only Black-owned cotton gin
For many years, the co-op also operated the only Black-owned
cotton gin in the United States. It burned down in 1986.
"There was no insurance and it would have cost $1 million to rebuild," David said. "By that time, the machinery was also outmoded. We had tried to keep it going by buying used equipment, but it was going downhill.
"Other farmers used to use the gin too," he continued. When it burned down, it was difficult for Black cotton farmers to get their cotton ginned nearby. To use the white-owned gins, you had to be a stockholder -a measure instituted to keep the Black farmers out.
"So Black farmers had to take their cotton 50 and 60 miles away, to other gins that weren't restricted to stockholders," David said. "Still, they wouldn't gin your cotton until they had finished with their own members." He once lost more than 50 bales of cotton because the gin he went to wouldn't process it. (A bale weighs between 400 and 500 pounds.)
The Mileston Co-op now has 15 members. They are trying to help members with marketing and also looking into programs that could help provide jobs in the area, such as canning vegetables.
David and R.C. Howard have been farming their whole lives, just like their fathers and grandfather before them. Like many farmers in the Delta, they plant cotton and soybeans. The two grew up with the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
"Our fathers used to put up civil rights workers at their farmhouses," David recalled. "And my grandfather, who had a couple of small houses, let one be used for a school they set up." The Howards have long worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in the Delta.
David has two other jobs besides working his 200-acre farm. He drives a school bus every day and also works full-time as a mechanic at an auto parts plant in Greenwood. "About half the cooperative members work at outside jobs," David said.
Drought in 1998
The last year has been hard for Delta farmers, as for many
others around the country, because of a serious drought. Many,
including David Howard, put thousands of dollars into their
farms and got little or nothing back.
Disaster relief is another way that Black farmers have been discriminated against by the government. The amount of disaster relief a farmer gets is based on estimated yields. A yield is the production per acre. It is measured differently for each commodity. For example, soybeans are measured in bushels per acre; or if your cotton averages three bales per acre, your yield would be 1500. The processor at the gin or mill certifies a farmer's yield. Although David had planted, he was given "zero yield" and therefore no relief. No white farmers in the area were put in that category.
Both David and R.C. had mixed reactions to the proposed settlement to the Black farmers' lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). "Some it will do some good, others it won't," said R.C., 44, who farms full-time. "$50,000 isn't much money compared to what some farmers have lost; others it will help."
"Part of the settlement should be to do something with the folks who have been doing the discriminating," added David.
"The farmers are the backbone of the country," R.C. stressed. "When it takes $350-$375 an acre to plant cotton, you need to be guaranteed at least $400 an acre in return, not $280. A man in a suit and tie, who has never been working out in the hot sun, sits in an office somewhere and sets these prices. He'll set 55-56 cents a pound for cotton, when we need 80-85 cents a pound just to survive." Farmers also have to pay exorbitant amounts for pesticides to kill worms and other pests that damage crops and reduce yields, including $24 an acre to the USDA to spray for boll weevil, an insect that destroys cotton.
The Mileston Co-op has three new, small buildings, including a convenience store they are hoping to build up.