The loss of agricultural land among black farmers

Western Journal of Black Studies, The, Summer, 2006 by Edmund Merem

The Purpose and Organization of the Paper

This paper analyzes the issue of landlessness within the Black farming community. Emphasis is on the factors associated with the trend as well as some case studies showing the occurrence. The paper is divided into five sections with section two outlining the previous efforts to deal with landlessness and the factors responsible for the problem. Section three presents three case studies to document the trends, while section four covers land retention efforts and success stories at the margin. The fifth section contains the final portion of the paper with a synopsis of the findings, strategies and conclusion.

Methodology

The methodological framework guiding this research drew largely from a keyword based literature search for the relevant documents on landlessness in the Black farming community as well as a descriptive approach. As a result, much of the analysis in this paper has a descriptive focus. The literature search also relied on information from databases and abstracts that are presently available. Based upon keywords related to the term African American farmers, land loss, landlessness, efforts and factors, several articles were located. In addition, the information search relied on the exchange of ideas with the library staff of Jackson State University and scholars at the University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center. In the process, the writer then became aware of more articles with relevance to the topic.

Section 2

Efforts to Deal with Landlessness and Factors Resonsible

The decline of farmland as indicated with the rapid fall in the number of Black farm operators in Table 1 has always aroused the interventions of governmental and Black entities. The first portion of this section outlines the efforts of some institutions in addressing the problem, while the second portion highlights the factors creating the problems.

Congressional Initiatives

The land problems faced by Black farmers attracted congressional interventions in the 1990s. During the 1994 fiscal year, the Land loss Prevention Project in a freedom of Information Act lawsuit on behalf Black farmers, provided key information over to congress to probe alleged discriminatory practices by the USDA in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Two years latter in 1996, 1000 black farmers initiated a $3.5 billion class action suit against the USDA that uncovered the unlawful refusal of loans and disaster relief through the 1980s and 1990s. In the face of mounting pressures from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the United States Congress passed the Agricultural Appropriation Bill in 1999, which pledged assistance to black farmers. This bill abolished the two year statue of limitation on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, allowing farmers who sought to file discriminatory complaints at the USDA from January 1981 to July 1987 (the period when the USDA's civil rights investigative arm was closed), to file new complaints. In 1999 based on the growing pressure, the USDA reached a settlement with the plaintiffs and agreed to disburse $50,000 to black farmers participating in the class action suit. Regrettably, for these farmers this settlement has not been able to reverse the problems (Coax-Net 2004).