American farmers of color seek justice for discrimination in obtaining promised federal aid

The corridors of the American courts are witnessing a legal dispute between farmers of color, especially those of African-American descent, and the US government.

In October, farmers of color sued the US government for reneging on its promise to pay farmers' debts after a group of white farmers filed legal challenges arguing that their exclusion was a violation of their constitutional rights, or what they called reverse discrimination.

In turn, black farmers see the current government's policies as a return to the Jim Crow era, when black farmers could only see their local loan officer on one day of the week, what was then called Black Wednesday.

Although the government has offered alternative programs to help cash-strapped farmers, the farmers of color argue that the new programs do not match the USDA's previous offer to repay 120% of the debts of socially disadvantaged farmers.

According to the lawsuit, this category includes more than 6,500 farmers with racial or ethnic bias who are burdened with federal loan obligations, which includes American Indians, Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, Black Americans, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics.

Issues of institutional racism and affirmative action are at the core of American politics and represent the core of what American historian Andrew Hartman has called “a war for the soul of America.”

While the government went easy on white farmers during the mortgage repayment period, lenders - led by the US Department of Agriculture - often refused to give black farmers the money and were quicker to foreclose. Inheritance laws have also often caused the breakup of homesteads.

Background

The economic policies of the US government caused the amount of agricultural land owned by blacks to shrink. While they owned more than 16 million acres in the first decade of the twentieth century, this area has shrunk to less than 5 million acres today.

According to the latest agricultural census of the US Department of Agriculture, black farms decreased from 925,000 to less than 36,000, and only one out of every 100 farmers is black, down from 14% in 1910.

In 1999, black farmers took their case to court, with the federal government paying more than $2.4 billion in a court settlement, though the court later admitted there were unresolved problems with the USDA's farm loan programs.

Although the US Congress agreed to schedule $5 billion in debt relief for thousands of farmers of color in 2021, that program was halted after white farmers filed lawsuits arguing that the law violated their rights.

Later, Congress introduced a new law that would allocate $3.1 billion to help farmers who struggle with USDA-subsidized loans, in addition to $2.2 billion for “farmers that have suffered discrimination by the USDA farm loan programs,” according to the USDA statement.

The government believes that changing the law prevented litigation from possibly continuing for years, which could disrupt the work of colored farmers, while colored farmers see that the matter is just a link in a long chain of covenants broken by the US government against them, and they hope that the lawsuit will pressure the government to implement their demands.