By Summer Sewell, The Guardian, August 20, 2021
Black farmers throughout the south call Cornelius Blanding daily to ask when the money might come from the US Department of Agriculture. Updates aren’t coming any other way.
Blanding and his staff at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives do their best to stay on top of a federal debt relief program that should have started to pay farmers in June. They field calls and answer questions with limited information from the USDA, knowing only that a small percentage of Black farmers, and an even smaller percentage of the cooperatives’ membership, are eligible.
The $4bn in debt relief has been referred to as a reparations package to correct longstanding USDA discrimination against Black farmers, but the rollout of payments has been held up by lawsuits filed by white farmers who are left out of this loan forgiveness program. Designed to support all farmers of color, in reality more Native American than Black farmers could benefit from the program.
Comments (0)