Ask most Americans today what breaks the bank, and they’ll tell you it’s the cost of feeding their families. Skyrocketing costs and stagnant wages have made it tougher to afford life’s basics. The family farmers who produce our food know this struggle all too well. With fuel, land and equipment growing more expensive by the day, and Big Ag monopolies pulling the strings of the market, it’s a miracle any of us can make a living.
Many farmers don’t. In fact, nearly half of all small farmers in America take second jobs to make ends meet, while hundreds file for bankruptcy every year. And this was all before the pandemic supply chain problems choked our ability to get products to market.
It’s been hard on all of us, but some have it far worse. Farmers of color — the more than 45,000 Black, 112,000 Latino, 50,000 Indigenous and 25,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander growers working across the United States — have to deal not only with the razor-thin earnings that come with independent farming, but must also swim against the tide of historic and ongoing discrimination within the industry, from the government and even from some of their neighbors. Black farmers alone have lost more than $326 billion in generational wealth due to land loss and predatory lending by the USDA over the last century.
So it was a welcome relief — albeit a drop in the bucket — when the federal government promised $4 billion in emergency debt relief to farmers of color through the passage of the American Rescue Plan at the height of the pandemic last year. More than 17,000 farmers applied and qualified for assistance, including 3,100 Black farmers. But soon after the legislation passed, a small number of white farmers, manipulated by dark money interests, filed lawsuits to stop the program.
Organizations that represent small family farmers across America, such as The Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and ours — the National Family Farm Coalition — have been fighting to keep the program alive. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives worked to defend the program in court, and was poised to set an important legal precedent: that discriminatory acts by the government create a disproportionate economic burden on farmers of color, and that government programs designed to address and correct those discrepancies are justified and necessary.
But before the group could finish arguing its case, farmers of color were dealt another blow when Congress suddenly repealed the program in a backroom deal to ease the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). They replaced it with a watered-down loan modification scheme in the IRA for “financially-distressed farmers” with no assurances that the 17,000 farmers of color who originally applied and were approved for debt relief would receive it.
Now those farmers who have already been left waiting for relief for more than a year are stuck, holding their bills and their breath again, unsure if they will ever see the loan forgiveness that they were promised. Meanwhile, their expenses continue to mount and many could soon face foreclosure.
I know that a lot of small farmers are struggling, and many of us could use some debt forgiveness. But debt relief that addresses racial injustice is desperately needed, given our country’s history of theft, segregation and broken promises. To deny farmers of color debt relief now — a promise that was made more than a year ago by our government — is flat out immoral.
The best way forward now is to tap into the IRA funds and empower the Farm Services Agency to deliver this much-needed relief. This act of justice would not only right a multigenerational wrong; it would clear the path to help all small farmers who are hurting right now.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Jim Goodman is a retired dairy farmer from Wonewoc, Wisconsin, and board president of the National Family Farm Coalition. This column was produced by Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.
