Filed under: News, Profiles, Politics, President Obama
When slavery ended, Philip Haynie says his great-grandfather was the first black to purchase land in Northumberland County, Virginia.
Farming became the family profession, and today, Haynie, 56, and his son represent the fourth and fifth generations of farmers in the family.
But between Haynie and his son, most of the 800 to 900 acres they use to grow soy beans and wheat is leased. That's because they can't afford the $6,000 per acre it now costs to purchase land. When Haynie first started farming in the 1970s and land was selling for $500 per acre, he couldn't access the same low-cost government loans and financing that were being extended to white farmers:
"My great-grandfather was doing better than I was and he was coming out of slavery. I feel like I've been in economic slavery or prison for a crime that I did not commit," Haynie told Aol. Black Voices in an interview.
"We can't buy the land here, and that's the real problem. I should have been buying land back then and my wealth would be growing now, but because I missed that opportunity, I'll only be able to afford to lease land."
That's the story that thousands of other black farmers tell and the reason that black farmers like Haynie brought a successful lawsuit against the government for years of discrimination. The USDA slowed black farmers' loans, making them miss planting opportunities, and denied them equipment grants and other subsidies that were readily available to white farmers.
A 2007 study found that black farmers only received between one-third and one-sixth the crop subsidies allocated to white farmers.
In February, President Barack Obama, who also introduced legislation when he was a senator, announced the settlement.
But since then, the U.S. Senate has failed to fund the $1.25 billion settlement, stripping it from the confines of other bills on three different occasions, even though it has passed twice in the House.
John Boyd Jr., himself a farmer and president of the National Black Farmers Association, told Aol. Black Voices that frustration is mounting and time is running out for some black farmers, after a meeting to lobby legislators on Capitol Hill:
"For a farmer who can't pay his light bill, that money can be a shot in the arm as far as making a difference in the lives of a person who lost their farm. This may not put them back in business but it will bring some comfort to older black farmers who have worked all their lives and been mistreated by the government."
"Basically, we are tied up in bipartisan politics on Captiol Hill. That's why we are calling on Senator [Harry] Reid to introduce a free-standing bill, so we can get a full blown vote on this. We have Republicans who say they will vote for this," said Boyd.
Black farmers have been fighting for a settlement over three different presidential administrations. The federal government first settled Pigford v. Glickman in 1999, paying out more than $980 million to 16,000 farmers, but many of the black farmers who were discriminated against were not properly notified or given enough time to join the suit.
As a result, a 2007 farm bill introduced by Obama reopened the settlement and the $1.25-billion figure was agreed upon. But the payment has not made it through the Senate. Although many Democrats and Republicans are supportive of the bill, there is a hesitancy to approve a payout of this size, even though the payment would only average out to about $50,000 per farmer, as the mid-term elections approach.
Many of those farmers are now old, facing bankruptcy, illness, dying and losing their land to things like tax liens.
Estimates show that there are less than 40,000 black farmers, mostly in the rural South, left in the United States. Those numbers have dropped 50 percent over the last two decades as farmers die out and go out of business.
"A lot of people have died and are in bad health. It's like they are trying to wait us out," Willie Adams, a farmer in Greensboro, Ga., who has raised chickens and hopes to one day revive his 60 acres for organic beef and vegetables, told Aol. Black Voices.
Adams, whose family first acquired farmland in 1938 as part of FDR's New Deal, has suffered a heart attack and high blood pressure as he has struggled to maintain his land.
He says he recalls going to the USDA to get money to raise dairy cattle or upgrade his equipment and being told there wasn't enough money for what he was requesting but then hearing about others getting assistance. The loans he was approved for would come in too late to properly plant crops.
"It's been very strenuous. My children see how you get treated and they don't want any part of the family business. If you didn't have any heart, you can't do this," said Adams. 'I would have been profitable if I was getting the same help others received."
Adams' son Cedric, 25, says he is studying for his degree in criminal justice after seeing his father struggle:
"You see what's going on and think that you better try to do something where you have a future," Cedric Adams told Aol. Black Voices. "This was his livelihood, and he couldn't get help, but then you look over and see whites and they get all the help they need and all the equipment they need, and you wonder why can't things just be fair and why can't everyone get the same things?"
Adding insult to injury is how swiftly Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack responded to a heavily edited tape showing USDA official Shirley Sherrod speaking about discrimination.
Sherrod talks about how she did not feel like going all out for a white farmer but decided that would be discrimination and eventually helped the farmer sell his land. A conservative blogger released a heavily edited version of the tape and Sherrod was fired almost immediately.
But when the full version of the tape came out, everyone from Bill O'Reilly to President Barack Obama had to apologize.
"She was asked to resign without a full investigation," Boyd said. "You have 80,000 black farmers file complaints and not one person is fired for acts of discrimination. They made a spectacle out of Ms. Sherrod and I call that a double, even triple standard in America."
Now Boyd is reaching out to civil rights leaders, such as the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Marc Morial of the National Urban League, for help in pushing the funding legislation through. There is talk that the Senate may consider funding the settlement today, Thursday, but it will again be attached to a $30-billion small business loan bill.
Meanwhile, farmers like Haynie and Adams say they will both hold on for the same reason: The next generation.
"I hope the farmers who get this settlement go out and buy a small piece of land and pass it on to the next generation, because this represents years of struggle and suffering," said Haynie.
Adams said he plans to farm for the "rest of his life" and wants to hold on to his land and pass it on to the next generation and teach them about farming and growing "real" and healthy food.
"Don't you know that a landless people is a powerless people," he said.