SOJOURNER TRUTH RADIO KPFA: JUNE 30, 2021 - BLACK AND INDIGENOUS FARMERS - INTERVIEW WITH KEISHA STOKES-HOUGH, LORETTE PICCIANO AND JOHN ZIPPERT

“Over the past century, Black landowners in the U.S. South have lost over 12 million acres of farmland, mostly from the 1950s onward, according to The Atlantic. Joe Brooks, the former president of the Emergency Land Fund, a group founded in 1972 to fight the problem of dispossession, estimated that about 6 million acres was lost by Black farmers between 1950 to 1969 alone. This represents an average of 820 acres a day, an area the size of New Yorks Central Park wiped out every day. Black-owned cotton farms in the U.S. South have almost completely disappeared, withering away from 87,000 to just over 3,000 in the 1960s alone. Furthermore, the racial disparity in farm acreage dramatically increased in Mississippi from 1950 to 1964, when Black farmers lost almost 800,000 acres of land, according to the Census of Agriculture. This land loss is also a financial loss, estimated to be around $3.7 billion to $6.6 billion in todays dollars.

Today, only 1.3 percent of U.S. farmers, or about 45,000, are Black, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Back in 2010, the National Black Farmers Association held a demonstration in Washington D.C., where they drove their tractors around Capitol Hill to demand justice. A similar tractor protest was mobilized by the National Black Farmers Association in 2002. In 2020, under Trumps regime and during the height of the COVID-19 virus, only 0.1 percent of pandemic relief funding to help U.S. farmers during the Trump administration went to Black farmers, according to The Washington Post. Black farmers received only $20.8 million of the nearly $26 billion of payments made in two rounds of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program announced last year.

Fast forward to 2021, under the presidency of President Joe Biden. A coalition of over 25 grassroots organizations have filed an amicus brief asking a federal court in Wisconsin to allow the distribution of $4 billion in loan forgiveness set aside by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, known as the USDA. The amicus brief speaks out against decades of injustice, systemic racism and admitted discriminatory behavior by the federal government. The assistance package was part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (known as ARPA) signed into law by Biden back in March.

However, on June 10, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin issued a temporary restraining order, stopping relief to over 17,000 Black, Indigenous and other farmers of color. Furthermore, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida issued a preliminary injunction to further delay the relief to Black and Indigenous farmers provided by Congress in the ARPA. This decision puts them in severe financial peril, taking them off their lands and inhibiting their centuries-long struggle for equity in agriculture. Over 200 groups have signed a statement in support of immediately distributing the relief, pointing out that this landmark piece of legislation is desperately needed.

Joining us to discuss this are Keisha Stokes-Hough, Lorette Picciano and John Zippert.”