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After Years of Injustice, Black Farmers Had a Shot at Debt Relief. Then Stephen Miller Stepped In.
Cornelius Key, the son and grandson of sharecroppers, does something that was denied to his ancestors: He farms land that he owns. On 400 acres in Baker County, Georgia, he raises peanuts, corn, and cattle. Growing up, Key, 64, remembers that his father would often work the entire year on ground parceled out by the landlord in exchange for a share of the harvestonly to eke out no net income after a season of hard work. Then you have to borrow money from [the owners] to have something for your family to eat, even during Christmas, he says. Sharecropping involved a perpetual treadmill of debt, with sparse opportunities to get ahead.
To get a foothold in the area where he was raisedwithout the benefit of inherited wealthKey had to turn to a different kind of debt: bank loans, the resource that has been the lifeblood of US farming for a century. The US Department of Agriculture plays a central role in agricultural debt markets, guaranteeing loans and acting as the lender of last resortand it has used that power in a way that effectively transferred millions of acres of land owned by Black farmers into the hands of white ones. A 2019 US Government Accountability Office report found that minority and women farmers get a disproportionately small share of USDA loans; and a July 2021 analysis by Politico reporter Ximena Bustillo showed that in 2020, the USDA approved 71 percent of loan applications from white farmers, versus only 37 percent from Black farmers.
For the Black farmers like Key who survived this great dispossession, debt remains a major burden, one that falls much harder on them than on their white counterparts. Key employs an automotive metaphor to describe what it feels like to owe the USDAs financial arm, the Farm Services Agency, more than $200,000: When you have a worn-out truck, youre scared to get on the road to take a long trip, because you dont know what might happenit might cut off; it might make it or it might not.
This uncertainty, in many ways, just felt like a reality Key would have to live with. Then in March 2021, after years of pressure from groups like the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a Georgia-based nonprofit association of Black farmers where Key works as a state coordinator, Congress took a small step toward redressing the USDAs long history of racism and making it easier for people like Key to squeeze out a livelihood in agriculture: The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act allotted $4 billion to erase the debt for thousands of farmers of color with outstanding USDA-backed loans. Keys FSA loan balance would have evaporated.
When Key and some of his Georgia peers first heard about the provision in March, they were still mapping out plans for the growing season. Assuming that the relief would come pretty quickly, he says, we started putting more into this years crop than we normally do and started paying off other bills.
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2021/11/black-farmers-debt-relief-stephen-miller-usda-loans-discrimination/
To get a foothold in the area where he was raisedwithout the benefit of inherited wealthKey had to turn to a different kind of debt: bank loans, the resource that has been the lifeblood of US farming for a century. The US Department of Agriculture plays a central role in agricultural debt markets, guaranteeing loans and acting as the lender of last resortand it has used that power in a way that effectively transferred millions of acres of land owned by Black farmers into the hands of white ones. A 2019 US Government Accountability Office report found that minority and women farmers get a disproportionately small share of USDA loans; and a July 2021 analysis by Politico reporter Ximena Bustillo showed that in 2020, the USDA approved 71 percent of loan applications from white farmers, versus only 37 percent from Black farmers.
For the Black farmers like Key who survived this great dispossession, debt remains a major burden, one that falls much harder on them than on their white counterparts. Key employs an automotive metaphor to describe what it feels like to owe the USDAs financial arm, the Farm Services Agency, more than $200,000: When you have a worn-out truck, youre scared to get on the road to take a long trip, because you dont know what might happenit might cut off; it might make it or it might not.
This uncertainty, in many ways, just felt like a reality Key would have to live with. Then in March 2021, after years of pressure from groups like the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a Georgia-based nonprofit association of Black farmers where Key works as a state coordinator, Congress took a small step toward redressing the USDAs long history of racism and making it easier for people like Key to squeeze out a livelihood in agriculture: The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act allotted $4 billion to erase the debt for thousands of farmers of color with outstanding USDA-backed loans. Keys FSA loan balance would have evaporated.
When Key and some of his Georgia peers first heard about the provision in March, they were still mapping out plans for the growing season. Assuming that the relief would come pretty quickly, he says, we started putting more into this years crop than we normally do and started paying off other bills.
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2021/11/black-farmers-debt-relief-stephen-miller-usda-loans-discrimination/
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After Years of Injustice, Black Farmers Had a Shot at Debt Relief. Then Stephen Miller Stepped In. (Original Post)
demmiblue
Nov 2021
OP
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,033 posts)1. Here are the two key paragraphs OP title promised but didn't include
But just as Bidens USDA prepared to dole out the cash, a growing backlash threatened the program. Right-wing political operatives, including white nationalism enthusiast Stephen Miller, former President Donald Trumps immigration whisperer, launched a swarm of lawsuits against the American Rescue Plan Acts debt relief plank. According to the complaint from Millers group, the program represented unconstitutional discriminatory racial preferences. (The complaint did not mention that under Millers former boss, an unprecedented gusher of USDA subsidies flowed to white farmers, largely bypassing their Black counterparts.)
Their effort has succeeded so far: In June, after federal judges issued several injunctions, including one responding to Millers suit, the program was frozen before a single farmer saw a penny of debt relief.
Their effort has succeeded so far: In June, after federal judges issued several injunctions, including one responding to Millers suit, the program was frozen before a single farmer saw a penny of debt relief.