Black farmers ask for fair share of monies in tobacco settlement

Jet, August 18, 1997

The National Black Farmers Association has called upon the tobacco companies to specifically include minority farmers in any national negotiated settlement with tobacco farmers.

The group, which is headed by John W. Boyd, requested that a reasonable penalty for past inequities also be set aside from the $7 billion settlement, namely an additional $290 million for Black farmers who number about 3,700 of the nation's 125,000 farmers.

Boyd claimed that historically the Black farmers have been unfairly treated under the tobacco quota system.

He also asked an additional $75 million be awarded to the land grant institutions for research into other uses of tobacco and for substitute crops, and $25 million to be set aside for scholarships for young Blacks to study agriculture.

"We were brought to this country to work the land," Boyd said, "but now our land is almost gone. We want to rebuild a Black-owned land base, and one of the ways to do that is to educate more young farmers."

The organization was founded last year in Virginia for Black and other small farmers to get the Agriculture Department to end discrimination against minority and small farmers in farm programs.