DOS_patos
Unverified Legion of Trill member
Shade Lewis had just come in from feeding his cows one sunny spring afternoon when he opened a letter that could change his life: The government was offering to pay off his $200,000 farm loan, part of a new debt relief program created by Democrats to help farmers who have endured generations of racial discrimination.
It was a windfall for a 29-year-old who has spent the past decade scratching out a living as the only Black farmer in his corner of northeastern Missouri, where signposts quoting Genesis line the soybean fields and traffic signals warn drivers to go slow because it is planting season.
But the $4 billion fund has angered conservative white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded because of their race. And it has plunged Lewis and other farmers of color into a new culture war over race, money and power in U.S. farming.
“You can feel the tension,” Lewis said. “We’ve caught a lot of heat from the conservative Caucasian farmers.”
The debt relief is redress set aside for what the government calls “socially disadvantaged farmers” — Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other nonwhite workers who have endured a long history of discrimination, from violence and land theft in the Jim Crow South to banks and federal farm offices that refused them loans or government benefits that went to white farmers.
The program is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress to confront how racial injustice has shaped U.S. farming, which is overwhelmingly white. Black farm advocacy groups say that nearly all the land, profit and subsidies go to the biggest, most powerful farm operations, leaving Black farmers with little. But in large portions of rural America, the payments threaten to further anger white conservative farmers.
The plans have drawn thousands of enraged comments on farm forums and are being fought by banks worried about losing interest income. And some rural residents have rallied around a new slogan, cribbed from the conservative response to the Black Lives Matter movement: All Farmers Matter.
Lewis is part of a new generation of Black farmers venturing back into urban plots and small rural farms, driven by a desire to nourish their communities with healthy food and create wealth rooted in the land.
Growing up in LaGrange, a city of 950 along the Mississippi River, Lewis would scoot a toy John Deere tractor through his mother’s apartment and pretend he was farming the carpet. He joined 4-H, farming and business groups in high school. He started farming at 19, with a few cows and dreams of ending the day with his own dirt on the soles of his boots.
“I worried about him,” said his father, Kevin Lewis. “I watch him and shake my head and say, 'Is it worth it?'”
It can be a tough, lonely life. In 1920, African Americans owned some 14% of the farms in the United States. But after a century of racial violence, foreclosures, migration into cities and farm consolidation, there are fewer than 49,000 left, representing 1.4% of American farmers. Most are concentrated in the Southeast and Texas.
These days, Black farmers have forged online networks that function as their own digital homemade farm bureaus. They celebrate first turnip harvests, ask whether fertilizer made from fish can revive wilting plants and commiserate about navigating government programs and the isolation of being the only Black farmers in their counties.
“You don’t have a network. You don’t have an infrastructure. There’s nothing,” said Sandy Thompson, who started an online directory of Black farmers in 2019 after abandoning a three-year quest to convert a 5-acre plot outside San Antonio into a vegetable farm.
Thompson spent $20,000 on equipment only to have her mower get stuck in the sandy soil. She called university extension offices, a vital source of guidance for farmers, but said she never got any help.
“We are not competitive with white farmers,” she said. “We need any help we can get.”
Nonwhite farmers, who make up about 5% of farmers, say they struggle disproportionately to get loans and government grants. They received less than 1% of the billions of dollars in subsidies that flowed into farm country last year under former President Donald Trump to compensate farmers hurt by the coronavirus pandemic and the trade war with China.
Lewis said he spent years struggling financially and searching for credit as he built his cattle herd from a few cows on rented ground to about 200 cows and calves on more than 100 acres of his own land. At first, he said, farm agents did not return his calls. Banks scoffed at his plans. Some days, he could not afford to gas up the red pickup truck that would stall out as he went to fix fences and spread manure in his alfalfa fields. Like many farmers, he works a second job, on power transmission lines.
Getting his government loan paid off now could change everything. He said he could pay down other loans on his livestock, expand the patchwork of fields he owns to compete against established farmers, and get financing to build a home so he and his wife can escape their one-bedroom apartment.
“It’ll open up a whole lot of doors,” he said. “Maybe these local banks that didn’t have time for minorities will open up to us.”
the rest at:
news.yahoo.com
It was a windfall for a 29-year-old who has spent the past decade scratching out a living as the only Black farmer in his corner of northeastern Missouri, where signposts quoting Genesis line the soybean fields and traffic signals warn drivers to go slow because it is planting season.
But the $4 billion fund has angered conservative white farmers who say they are being unfairly excluded because of their race. And it has plunged Lewis and other farmers of color into a new culture war over race, money and power in U.S. farming.
“You can feel the tension,” Lewis said. “We’ve caught a lot of heat from the conservative Caucasian farmers.”
The debt relief is redress set aside for what the government calls “socially disadvantaged farmers” — Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other nonwhite workers who have endured a long history of discrimination, from violence and land theft in the Jim Crow South to banks and federal farm offices that refused them loans or government benefits that went to white farmers.
The program is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress to confront how racial injustice has shaped U.S. farming, which is overwhelmingly white. Black farm advocacy groups say that nearly all the land, profit and subsidies go to the biggest, most powerful farm operations, leaving Black farmers with little. But in large portions of rural America, the payments threaten to further anger white conservative farmers.
The plans have drawn thousands of enraged comments on farm forums and are being fought by banks worried about losing interest income. And some rural residents have rallied around a new slogan, cribbed from the conservative response to the Black Lives Matter movement: All Farmers Matter.
Lewis is part of a new generation of Black farmers venturing back into urban plots and small rural farms, driven by a desire to nourish their communities with healthy food and create wealth rooted in the land.
Growing up in LaGrange, a city of 950 along the Mississippi River, Lewis would scoot a toy John Deere tractor through his mother’s apartment and pretend he was farming the carpet. He joined 4-H, farming and business groups in high school. He started farming at 19, with a few cows and dreams of ending the day with his own dirt on the soles of his boots.
“I worried about him,” said his father, Kevin Lewis. “I watch him and shake my head and say, 'Is it worth it?'”
It can be a tough, lonely life. In 1920, African Americans owned some 14% of the farms in the United States. But after a century of racial violence, foreclosures, migration into cities and farm consolidation, there are fewer than 49,000 left, representing 1.4% of American farmers. Most are concentrated in the Southeast and Texas.
These days, Black farmers have forged online networks that function as their own digital homemade farm bureaus. They celebrate first turnip harvests, ask whether fertilizer made from fish can revive wilting plants and commiserate about navigating government programs and the isolation of being the only Black farmers in their counties.
“You don’t have a network. You don’t have an infrastructure. There’s nothing,” said Sandy Thompson, who started an online directory of Black farmers in 2019 after abandoning a three-year quest to convert a 5-acre plot outside San Antonio into a vegetable farm.
Thompson spent $20,000 on equipment only to have her mower get stuck in the sandy soil. She called university extension offices, a vital source of guidance for farmers, but said she never got any help.
“We are not competitive with white farmers,” she said. “We need any help we can get.”
Nonwhite farmers, who make up about 5% of farmers, say they struggle disproportionately to get loans and government grants. They received less than 1% of the billions of dollars in subsidies that flowed into farm country last year under former President Donald Trump to compensate farmers hurt by the coronavirus pandemic and the trade war with China.
Lewis said he spent years struggling financially and searching for credit as he built his cattle herd from a few cows on rented ground to about 200 cows and calves on more than 100 acres of his own land. At first, he said, farm agents did not return his calls. Banks scoffed at his plans. Some days, he could not afford to gas up the red pickup truck that would stall out as he went to fix fences and spread manure in his alfalfa fields. Like many farmers, he works a second job, on power transmission lines.
Getting his government loan paid off now could change everything. He said he could pay down other loans on his livestock, expand the patchwork of fields he owns to compete against established farmers, and get financing to build a home so he and his wife can escape their one-bedroom apartment.
“It’ll open up a whole lot of doors,” he said. “Maybe these local banks that didn’t have time for minorities will open up to us.”
the rest at:
'You Can Feel the Tension': A Windfall for Minority Farmers Divides Rural America
LaGRANGE, Mo. — Shade Lewis had just come in from feeding his cows one sunny spring afternoon when he opened a letter that could change his life: The government was offering to pay off his $200,000 farm loan, part of a new debt relief program created by Democrats to help farmers who have endured...
