WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Agriculture Thursday will unveil the members of a new commission to combat decades of discrimination by the department that Black farmers say has contributed to a sharp decrease in their ranks across the country.
But some Black farmers and activists are skeptical the new equity commission will do enough to address the longstanding discrimination they say they have experienced from the USDA, including barriers to obtaining and holding onto property.
“We have a trust issue here,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. “We have to restore trust. That’s difficult to do, given the past.”
The commission will include academics, lawyers, economists, policy experts and farmers, who will examine how the Agriculture Department has discriminated against Black farmers and lay that information out in a report within two years.
“People who have experienced the discrimination, it’s really important that they be on this committee,” said USDA Deputy Secretary Jewel Bronaugh, who will co-chair the commission, “that they can talk about the experiences and the things that they know.”
But the USDA says it has not yet laid out plans for how exactly a report would be used to influence policy or change, prompting concerns among activists of empty promises.
“It’s pretty hard to say precisely what those recommendations are going to be in terms of whether we can do something in a month or two months or six months or a year, but whatever the recommendations are, we’re going to try to expeditiously implement them,” Vilsack said.
The commission is required under Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law last March, but many Black advocates are worried the recommendations will come to little, if any, change.
“An equity commission is, as we see it, nothing but a smokescreen,” said Lawrence Lucas, president emeritus of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and a representative of the Justice for Black Farmers Group. “[It] will only reveal the truths that we already know.”
President Joe Biden promised during his campaign to create the equity commission and to provide low-interest loans and expedited credit to help Black, Native American and Latino farmers buy or keep farmland. The USDA says the new commission is part of that promise.
“The president’s been very clear in cabinet meetings, in meetings with groups of cabinet members and with me that it’s his expectation that we advance equity,” Vilsack told USA TODAY.
The commission will be co-chaired by Arturo Rodriguez, former president of the United Farm Workers, and Bronaugh, the first woman of color to hold her position.
“We do not want a commission of people who are just going to say ‘yes’ and nod,” Bronaugh said. “We want that critical and deep look at systemic issues that have occurred within USDA.”
The commission will hold its first virtual public meeting on Feb. 28, when farmers will be able to testify.
Bronaugh said the commission will help broaden the reach of the USDA’s programs to underserved communities, beginning with expanded technical assistance. High on the commission’s list will be outreach to organizations in rural areas, to make sure those farmers know what help is available from the USDA.
A culture of discrimination
Black farmers today account for 1.4% of all U.S. farmers, according to the Census Bureau, a steep drop from 1920, when they accounted for about 14% of U.S. farmers.
As the population of Black farmers dwindled, so did the size of their farms. Black farmers lost 80% of their land from 1910 to 2007, according to the Census Bureau. Today, Black farmers work just 0.5% of the country’s farmland.
Lucas said that decrease is the result of decades of discrimination by the USDA, which laid the groundwork for the 1999 class action lawsuit Pigford v. Glickman, in which the USDA agreed to pay Black farmers over $1 billion.
In the Pigford case – the largest civil rights settlement ever won against the federal government – tens of thousands of Black farmers alleged decades of racial discrimination, including unfair treatment in applying for Farm Service Agency loans needed to start or maintain their farms.
One of those farmers was Rod Bradshaw, a 67-year-old fourth generation cattle, milo and wheat farmer in southwest Kentucky. Since he began farming in the mid-1970s, Bradshaw said he has filed several discrimination complaints against the USDA, some of which remain unanswered, after being denied a farm ownership loan.
“My dad was a farmer, his dad was a farmer,” Bradshaw said. The USDA, he says, has “done some atrocious deeds” in discriminating against his family and others like him.
“There’s no accountability,” Bradshaw said. “They do whatever they want to do. Black people are tired of this foolishness.”
As of Friday, the USDA had an inventory of 243 open complaints, according to USDA spokeswoman Kate Waters. Fewer than a quarter of those complaints relate to farmers.
Still, Bradshaw said he believes the commission has the power to create some positive changes – if the USDA follows through.
“If they do their job, they have the potential to correct some very correctable [issues],” Bradshaw said. “But in order to correct something, you have to have a desire to correct it.”
Veronica Womack, executive director of the Georgia College Rural Studies Institute and founder of the Black Farmers Network, said she hopes the commission will lay the groundwork for lasting change.
“Long-term accountability, so it doesn’t matter what administration is in place,” Womack said. “That the political will be taken out of people’s ability to participate in the agricultural sector.”
Equity Commission members:
- Co-chair Jewel H. Bronaugh, Deputy Secretary of the USDA, Virginia
- Co-chair Arturo S. Rodriguez, Former President of the United Farm Workers, California
- Hazell Reed, Executive Director, National Black Growers Council, Arkansas
- Toni Stanger-McLaughlin, CEO, Native American Agriculture Fund, Washington
- Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of NAACP, Mississippi
- Ronald Rainey, Professor/Assistant Vice President of Agriculture, University of Arkansas, Arkansas
- Mireya Loza, Assistant Professor in History and American Studies, Georgetown University, District of Columbia
- Charles Rawls, former General Counsel, Farm Credit Administration and former General Counsel, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Virginia
- Shorlette Ammons, Community Food Systems Outreach Coordinator, North Carolina State University, North Carolina
- Poppy Sias-Hernandez, Executive Director of Global Michigan, Michigan
- Todd Corley, Senior Vice President, Inclusion, Sustainability & Community at Carhartt, Ohio
- Yvonne Lee, Retired; former Commissioner for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, California
- Elizabeth Lower-Basch, Director of Income and Work Supports at The Center for Law and Social Policy, Virginia
- Shirley Sherrod, Executive Director, Southwest Georgia Project, Georgia
- Ertharin Cousin, Chair and CEO, Food Systems for the Future, Illinois
- Rick Smith, President and CEO, Dairy Farmers of America, Missouri
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