Land Justice and the 2023 Farm Bill
More land is what Martice Scales, a Black farmer living in Wisconsin, needs in order to make his farm a sustainable source of income. To get more land, he needs access to more credit, which thus far, has eluded him. His attempts to obtain credit through special loan programs for “economically and socially disadvantaged” borrowers funded through the 2018 Farm Bill have been thwarted by their many bureaucratic restrictions. Scales specifically cites the lack of pre-approval and pre-qualification mechanisms in these lending programs, common features in most commercial loans, as a barrier to acquiring farmland. Lengthy approval processes mean he is unable to make timely offers on newly available land because it is scooped up by his more capitalized, commercial counterparts with easier credit access while he is still waiting for final loan approval.
You can read more of Martice Scales’ story here or view him here, where I first heard him talking about his experiences as a young, Black farmer.
Access to farmland is challenging for young farmers, and particularly so for those who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Ninety-eight percent of all farmland in this country is owned by White farmers. As the current, older generation of these White farmers retires, their land is passed down through family. As fewer of their descendants desire to continue farming, farmland is being sold to commercial developers at a rate of 2,000 acres a day. With less inter-generational wealth to use as capital, BIPOC farmers are at a competitive disadvantage when farmland is put on the market.
Scales’ family story is a familiar one for BIPOC farmers. His family stopped farming two generations ago when his grandfather was tricked into selling his land for a small fraction of what it was worth. Government agents pressured him to sign over his deed, knowing he could not read. Had his grandfather kept his land, Martice would have inherited it. He could have begun earning money unencumbered by debt and made retirement easier for his mother as well. Scales believes better government policy could improve BIPOC farmers’ access to farmland.
The Agriculture Improvement Act, commonly known as the Farm Bill, re-authorized every five years, spells out funding priorities for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Farm Bill covers a wide range of programs and activities that include commodity supports, conservation, nutrition assistance (i.e., SNAP), farm credit, forestry, horticulture, and crop insurance, to name a few.
The 2018 Farm Bill addressed the needs of “historically underserved” populations for the first time with programs to include representation of BIPOC farmers in program development and funding for special loans. And while this recognition was welcome, a better understanding of the policy needs of BIPOC farmers that are different than those of White farmers is needed to make greater land acquisition a reality.
The National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), for whom Scales is a Land Advocacy Fellow, launched the #amillionacres campaign this year to promote this understanding in the upcoming 2023 Farm Bill. Their Farm Bill Brief outlines their platform of recommendations for improving loan programs for young and BIPOC farmers. Other groups representing BIPOC farmers, such as the Native Farm Bill Coalition also have been advocating for greater attention to needs of underserved populations in this and every other program component of the 2023 Farm Bill.
The House and Senate Agriculture Committees, once they finish writing their separate versions of the new authorization, will debate, amend, and vote on the draft bills. Then, each full chamber will repeat this process until a final bill is voted on by the full Congress. The 2018 Farm Bill expired on September 30 before the approval of the 2023 Farm Bill. Funding for agricultural programs ostensibly is covered by the current continuing resolution keeping the rest of the government afloat as well. Advocates are hopeful that 2023 bill will be approved by the end of the calendar year. With this delay, however, there is still time for citizens to make their thoughts about the new bill known to their Congress people.
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Though I never desired to be a farmer, I had access to farmland, through my mother’s family. One hundred fifty years before my grandfather farmed it, this land was part of land taken by treaty from the Cherokee nation, after violence inflicted upon them by settlers gave them no choice except to give it up. Eventually, title to a quarter of a million acres covered by that treaty was given as a land grant to an officer in the American Revolutionary War. My grandfather’s 20 acres, purchased generations later, had been part of that initial land grant, subsequently subdivided many times.
I inherited a small portion of my grandfather’s land, and I could have purchased more on easy credit terms if I had wanted to farm it. This kind of access to family land was not possible for Martice Scales, however. Neither he nor I deserved better or worse than the other of us. Racism made what was possible for me, impossible for him. We cannot change the past, but we can use the present to make repair.
A call to action:
There is time to contact your Senators and Representative about any component of the 2023 Farm Bill you feel could better serve racial equity. I would say that the more specific you can be in your policy suggestions for racial equity the better. A good place to look first for more information is the NYFC Farm Brief, even citing your support of their platform, if that resonates with you.
The Farm Bill is a multi-component bill, and you may have interests in racial equity in other components such as nutrition or crop insurance. You can find more information about the racial aspects of these on other advocacy websites, such as site for the Native Farm Bill Coalition.
If you want to learn more generally about racial inequities in farming and our food systems, there are plenty of resources for you. Soul Fire Farm is a Black and Indigenous led farm and education and advocacy organization, with much information to offer you on its website. And there are advocacy groups for BIPOC farmers, not specific to the Farm Bill, such as the National Black Food and Justice Alliance and the National Black Farmers Association.
What else might you do to promote land and food justice? Be an ally with BIPOC-led advocacy organizations. The more local the group the better because the more likely you will be to create relationships with its members and see how issues of racial equity manifest in your community.
You also can make it easier for BIPOC farmers to make a living from farming. Buy food from them, especially those local in your area, ideally at your local farmer’s market if you are lucky enough to have one nearby. If you don’t know of any BIPOC farmers in your area, do some research. Some BIPOC producers sell products online (such as Zack and Zoe’s Honey) and you can buy from them from anywhere.
You also can make outright contributions (likely not tax-deductible, but they might be) to the running of BIPOC-owned farms that may or may not be close enough to buy from in person. This map, created by Northeast Farmers of Color, identifies farms that are open to receiving contributions of time, money, or land itself.
We want our actions to be effective, and these things may seem like trying to generate waves by throwing a pebble into the ocean. And I have questioned the effectiveness of possible efforts as well, especially writing my (very conservative) Congressional representatives. But it is a place to start, a beginning. We don’t really know who is going to be reading our email or listening to our calls, and what they might have been thinking about that day that could make them more receptive to what we have to say. I had mostly written off political advocacy at the federal level until I listened to a webinar and heard Martice Scales talk about the importance of policy written into the Farm Bill for his farm. And it made me curious to know more and to take some kind of action.
And here is what is almost as important as the rest of it. Taking the time to make this effort will change you. You will become more attuned to issues of racial equity and agriculture, and you may pay more attention to what kind of policy the 2023 Farm Bill actually legislates because you want to know how the (next chapter of the) story turns out. You may see the farmers in your community in a new way. And what happens to them will become more important to you. And you will speak out more often to more people. And the more people who throw that pebble into the ocean, the greater the disturbance in the water.
Next week I will share letters I send to my Senators and Representative
—same day, same time, next week.
Thank you for reading this post!