By Julia and Rebecca, The University of Memphis
The Farm Bill is a legislative package that directs the impact of farming livelihoods, agricultural practices, and the variety of produce grown throughout the country. It also covers crop insurance for farmers, training, healthy food access for low-income families, and supporting sustainable practices in farming. This legislative package essentially establishes the parameters for the food we can purchase, the farmers who raise the products, the environment this affects, and the safety and health of the consumers.
Under the Roosevelt administration in 1933, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was passed to increase crop prices and provide farmers with higher payments in response to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But since farmers of color had long been, for the most part, relegated to sharecropping and tenant farming, white farmers used the AAA to withhold their portion of cotton production from them. Acting as landlords, white farmers inked agreements that failed to give their tenants what they were due for their portion of the crops that were being plowed up and sold. For all farmers save white ones, this encouraged foreclosures; black farmers experienced a significant increase in foreclosures for a number of years after the AAA was passed.
Making right the historic wrongs
How much land do African American farmers now own? The shocking figure is the outcome of ongoing racist and discriminatory laws, which lead to the black farmer community owning only 1% of farmland today. The Biden administration has approved an updated Farm Bill that seeks to include black farmers in addition to other minority farmer groups. Black farmers and other farmers who have endured discrimination naturally lack confidence in the USDA.
Spending 3.1 billion dollars on grants, the recently reauthorized Farm Bill sought to reintegrate the historically marginalized population of farmers into modern agriculture. The Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities is one of the grants that will directly help farmers of color feel more confident in the USDA. Will this spending help to reach the intended outcome?
There have already been setbacks, and a lot of farmers still believe that the funds will benefit large farming corporations rather than actually promoting equality. Some believe they are being bought out once more, or that the equality promise will benefit young or female farmers but not black farmers.
