The meeting was the organization’s 20th annual Georgia Marketing and Trade Show Conference. It featured several speakers at workshops who presented goat and watermelon production, and organic farming, as alternative income sources for farmers whose traditional crops--peanuts, cotton, soybeans, and tobacco–are seen as less viable for small farmers. The government has cut subsidies on these crops to farmers, who also face chronically low market prices.

Randi Roth, court-appointed monitor in Pigford v. Veneman, the class action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for years of systematic discrimination against farmers who are Black, gave the main speech on the first day of the conference. The monitor is responsible for hearing petitions for review of denied claims and reporting to the court on the implementation of the consent decree.

In 1999 the USDA and lawyers for the farmers signed a consent decree settling the lawsuit, which 22,000 Black farmers had joined. When the consent decree was first proposed as a way to settle the lawsuit, the attorneys handling it argued forcefully in mass meetings held around the country that the farmers should take the deal.

Many farmers expressed serious reservations about the outcome, a number opposing the consent decree outright. Farmers were told that if they even met minimal requirements for proving discrimination they would receive $50,000 tax-free grants from the government. Roth updated farmers on the status of implementing the Consent Decree, and addressed some of the main problems farmers were experiencing.

Of the almost 22,000 original claimants in the suit, 13,008 have been approved and most have been paid the $50,000, plus $12,500 to pay taxes. The majority of the 8,574 whose claims have been denied have petitioned for monitor review, out of which only 1,900 have been decided. According to Roth, "the farmer won most" of these cases.

Roth said that the Internal Revenue Service is treating the $12,500 paid to farmers to cover the taxes on the $50,000 settlement as taxable income, leaving many farmers in a financial crisis. She said that in many cases debt relief given to claimants is also being treated as taxable income by the IRS. Also, as a result of the appeals process, backlogs, and provisions giving the government months to decide whether to appeal favorable decisions, many farmers may miss out on consideration in applying for their next farm loan and for technical assistance.

She reported that the monitor’s office was given five years to complete its job, and expects to use it all to review the remaining cases because they are focusing on "quality."

This long delay is putting in financial binds many active farmers "who need to know (the status of their claim) to make decisions about the future," according to John Zippert, a Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (FSC/LAF) member from Alabama who assists farmers with their claims.

Some 70,000 farmers or their descendants who missed the original claims deadline filed between July and September 2000, seeking to become part of the settlement. The office of arbitrator Michael Lewis is rejecting these claims wholesale. Of the 59,000 requests made by farmers, he has only given approval for 600 to be included in the settlement.

Rose Sanders, one of the attorneys representing farmers in the suit, joined Roth at the podium and explained that Lewis has decided that only those who actually requested their claim forms before but filed past the deadline will be allowed to submit a late claim.

Those who were hospitalized at the time of the deadline were not eligible unless they had already started the process of filing before the deadline.

James Mays, a farmer from Leslie, Georgia said that he had been approved for late filing. In his case, he had begun the process of filing, but his lawyer got sick and missed the deadline. The narrow interpretation of eligibility for a late claim sparked angry comments from many at the conference.

"The people in the case and those of us advocating for the farmers have all these deadlines put on us, but the government has no deadlines," said John Zippert. Many farmers despair of ever getting a response on their claims, he added.

Sanders responded to the farmers’ anger saying that there are two victims, the Black farmers and the lawyers. The lawyers, however, have received more than $14 million in payments from the government. She assured the farmers that the lawyers had been fined for missing deadlines in filing papers on individual cases and pointed out that the attorneys had agreed as part of the consent decree to not be paid for all the work they had done for those farmers whose claims were denied.

A controversy erupted over the composition of Farm Service Agency County Committees when USDA assistant secretary for administration Lou Gallegos noted that presently only 50 out of 8,600 of its members are Black. Referring to the racist legacy of these committees, participant Hazel Fullum asked, "how can a leopard change his spots?"

FSC/LAF member Felder Freeman from South Carolina questioned why these bodies were even needed, saying the farmers need to take these decisions "out of the hands of...adversaries, possibly someone that wants your land."

Georgia farmer Larry O’Neal responded to Gallegos’s praise for the government’s "homeland security" efforts, by noting that "our kids and forefathers go fight in wars for this country but when they return things are in the same shape."

O’Neal told the conference participants, "Last year I bought cotton seed for $79 a bag, today it cost $109, the government knows what the problems of farmers are. It should put some caps on prices...it has a 70 cent support price for cotton but the seed company takes it right back." The result, he continued, is "farmers get further and further in debt."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home