Vol. 79/No. 7      March 2, 2015

Many Black farmers face difficulties in getting operating loans and other help from the United States Department of Agriculture. “There is still a lot of racism and nepotism,” Evans said.

Some 60 non-farmers participated, including representatives of the USDA and other government agencies.

Some farmers came to learn more about how the 2014 Farm Bill, which replaced direct government payments to farmers with two new “safety-net” programs, would affect them. “We had three dry years and then we got too much rain. I’m waiting for a crop insurance payment right now,” said Nathan Hunt, 31, who grows peanuts and cotton on his farm in Blakely. “It’s going to be tough to make a living. The cost of production and what you get for selling your crop works out on paper — but not in the field. I’m thinking about getting a regular job to help make ends meet.”

Hunt and his father, also a farmer, were attending their first Federation of Southern Cooperatives conference.

“2015 will be challenging, with tighter margins” for farmers growing row crops like corn, cotton, peanuts and soybeans, said University of Georgia agricultural economist Amanda Smith. Her report highlighted the inherent uncertainties for working farmers forced to sell their products in the framework of the capitalist market system.

Both Smith and Don Kohler from the Georgia Peanut Commission reported there is a surplus of peanuts on the world market, saying farmers should consider rotating in other crops this year. Prices for cotton will also be lower, Smith said, due to decreased demand from China. Farmers in Georgia are the top U.S. producers of peanuts and the second leading growers of cotton.

Conference participants enjoyed the screening of a new documentary, “Dirt and Deeds in Mississippi: The Untold Story of How Black Landowners Became the Secret Weapon of the Fight for Equality.” The almost-completed film is narrated by Danny Glover and describes how Black farmers, especially in Holmes County, Mississippi, defended themselves and others against racist attacks arms in hand during the battles of the 1950s and ’60s that overthrew Jim Crow segregation.

It also shows their collaboration with civil rights fighters, including putting up their land deeds to post bail for them.

“Everything is over in the Pigford II lawsuit,” John Zippert, director of the Federation of Southern Cooperative’s Rural Development Training Center in Epes, Alabama, told conference participants. Pigford II refers to the second round of the historic class-action lawsuit filed by Black farmers against the USDA in 1997, which sought compensation for decades of racist discrimination for being systematically denied loans and access to government farm programs. After protests by Black farmers across the southeast and in Washington, D.C., they won in 1999.

After years of further protests, some farmers, who had been excluded from the first settlement, won the right to file new claims in 2012. A similar class-action lawsuit challenging USDA discrimination against women and Hispanic farmers is in the final stages of being settled, Zippert reported.

Karl Butts, a farmer in Plant City, Florida, contributed to this article.  
 
 
 
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