Farming While Black

by Leah Penniman

  Truth was echoing the call of Garrison Frazier and other Black ministers in the South who designed the idea of “40 acres and a mule,” and met with Union general William T. Sherman to negotiate implementation. Sherman agreed to this radical land redistribution plan, but President Jackson later reversed the policy. Despite the broken promises of “40 acres and a mule,” Black people purchased 120,738 farms by 1890. By 1910 black farmers had accumulated 218,972 farms and nearly 15 million acres, 14 percent of the nation’s farmland.

  Many of the graduates of Soul Fire Farm’s Black Latinx Farmers Immersion are going “home” to the South to revive land that is still in their family. They are part of a returning generation of Black farmers, of which farmer Ben Burkett commented, “Some of them have great passions and dreams, some have acquired achings and fears, and all of them have acknowledged, to varying degrees, the ways in which a people can feel bound to their land. They’re coming home, and they’re bringing with them the skills and strategies to capitalize on the organizing the farmers did during the civil rights movement and their recent lawsuit. They’re helping build networks and coalitions that grow, using structures and strategies that establish them locally as people to be contended with. It’s true that you can’t go home again, because home is a time as well as a place. But you can return to a particular piece of earth that’s in your blood and your heart.”20

  Policy Change

  “We will not let their pens write us out of existence!” proclaimed Lindsey Lunsford of Tuskegee University at the 2017 Black Farmers Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. We were co-facilitating a policy workshop with Dara Cooper of the National Black Food & Justice Alliance, sharing strategies for grassroots political organizing. Lunsford explained passionately how crucial it is that we understand and advocate for legal protections, which can endure for generations and benefit people beyond our immediate community.

  For example, the federal Farm Bill is the most important piece of legislation regulating the food system, governing nutrition assistance, farm credit, conservation, research, and trade. Until 1990 there were no provisions in the Farm Bill to address the needs of farmers of color; in fact, the programs of the Farm Bill were used as discriminatory tools against Black farmers. As a result of the advocacy in our communities, the “2501 program” for farmers of color and special funding set-asides in conservation programs and beginning farmer training grants were enacted.21 Even today, 50 percent of white farmers and only 31 percent of black farmers receive funding through a USDA program.22 We must persist in demanding our fair share of this public trust.

  UPLIFT

  Vision for Black Lives Policy Platform

  The Movement for Black Lives (MBL) is as old as white racism, but coalesced in its current incarnation in 2013, in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, and under the leadership of Black women—Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. MBL is now a global network of 40 organizations that intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. MBL convened in 2015 to write a unifying policy platform called “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom and Justice.” The platform has six “demands”: (1) End the war on black people; (2) reparations; (3) invest–divest; (4) economic justice; (5) community control; and (6) political power. It contains over 30 specific policies at the local, state, and federal levels that should be implemented to meet the demands. Of these beautifully crafted policies, several pertain to the plight of Black farmers, demanding the restoration of land, free education including in agriculture, and the end to the war on immigrants.23

  Farmers gather under a mango tree in Komye, Haiti, to discuss their policy platform. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

  Changing policies requires organizing and thorough comprehension of the policy you want to enact or change. Corporations banded together to create ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which writes “model bills” that become laws favoring corporate interests. ALEC makes it easy for politicians to just sign on the dotted line without having to do any of their own research or thinking. We can and must be more organized than the corporate interests.

  Northeast Farmers of Color Network Policy Demands

  Policy Action Steps to End Racism in the Food System

  Please contact your elected officials and encourage them to support the following policies:

  Real Food for Our People.

  Fully fund SNAP and WIC, eliminating barriers to access. Make EBT/SNAP easier for farmers to use by allowing online payment and automatic deduction. Expand healthy, sustainable, culturally appropriate options within these programs.

  Fund real food access in community institutions like schools, hospitals, day cares, prisons, and senior centers. Strengthen the Child Nutrition Reauthorization.

  Provide capital, credit, tax breaks, and training to worker and community-owned cooperative food enterprises that generate wealth for our people. Strengthen the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.

  Include agriculture and food systems science in the public school curriculum.

  End marketing of unhealthy food and food brands to children, including in schools. End subsidies for junk food marketing by closing the tax loophole that allows corporate write offs for marketing.

  Treat junk food and beverage companies like tobacco companies: hold companies liable for health impacts, and include visible warning labels, restricted advertising, barriers to purchase, and raise taxes that are re-invested in community.

  Dignity for Farm Workers.

  Equalize all labor and wage laws so that farm and food workers have a living wage, a day of rest, health insurance, overtime, workers compensation, and collective bargaining rights. Update the Fair Labor Standards Act and National Labor Relations Act to afford farmworkers equal protection under the law.

  End penal farms, where incarcerated people are enslaved for food production.

  Create supportive pathways for (migrant, seasonal) farmworkers to become land-owning farmers running their own businesses, owner-operators. Create pathways to legalization for all undocumented people, included pathways to citizenship for all those that want it, and end deportations until a comprehensive policy is in place.

  Support smaller and independent producers so that they can pay a living wage to farmworkers.

  Replace the indentured servitude of the H2A visa program with the North American Agricultural Work Visa, and uphold all provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

  Community-Based Farmer Training.

  Include urban farmers in the USDA farming census as a unique category and provide technical support to these farmers. Pass the Urban Agriculture Act.

  Provide funding for farmer training programs led by people of color, that address trauma and history, and offer strategies for navigating in the racist food system. These programs should take place in the community but be credit-bearing through partnerships with land grant universities.

  Create and host an online portal for new farmers of color to find farms run by farmers of color and get training there.

  Secure and protect land access and nonpredatory credit and capital for independent producers, particularly producers of color.

  Economic Viability for Farmers.

  Use public funds to pay farmers for preserving and enhancing ecosystem services and guarding the public trust (water purification, carbon sequestration, pollination, genetic diversity). This should be paid for by a tax on industrial agriculture for their externalities: dead zones in aquatic ecosystems, aquifer depletion, killing pollinators. Conventional agricultural should require a “certification” for its practices, rather than have that burden placed on organic farmers. Fully fund the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and Conservation Reserve Program, with set-asides for farmers of color.

  Offer price supports and price parity for farm products to ensure that income from crop sales covers the expenses of producing those crops. Include noncom
modity, heritage, and cultural crops in these programs.

  End the practice of unfair contracts siphoning earning from farmers to enrich corporations. Pass the Producer Protection Act.

  Equalize and expand access to crop insurance, technical assistance, non-GMO seed, equipment sharing, low interest credit, and technical assistance for independent producers, particularly producers of color. Include free legal and accounting clinics. Fully fund the Office of Advocacy and Outreach at the USDA.

  Increase access to markets for farmers of color through food hubs, processing centers, farmers markets, and farm-to-institution programs.

  Reduce paperwork burden for federal and state farming grants. Increase government staff support of application process. Make grants accessible to small farmers who are not incorporated. Move the application period to winter season. Eliminate matching funds requirements. Fully fund Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers (2501).

  Reparations for Stolen Land and Wealth.

  Reparations are necessary in the form of land and wealth redistribution to those who had land and wealth stolen from them: African American, Latinx, Indigenous people. Establish a commission to study reparations and propose a comprehensive redistribution of wealth and land.

  Enforce a moratorium on foreclosures of Black land; create a national trust or community-based organization that absorbs Black farmland and transfers it within the Black community. Implement the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act in all states.

  Create and implement farmer debt forgiveness programs in cases of discrimination. USDA should refinance loans for Black farmers.

  End “tied aid” policies that flood international markets with surplus commodities, and undermine smallholder farmers. Ban corporate land grabbing domestically and abroad.

  Some of the strategies that grassroots activists use to influence policy include:

  Food policy councils. Join these local or state coalitions that bring together advocates, businesses, farmers, food workers, and citizens to analyze the food system as a whole and make policy recommendations.

  USDA county committees. Run for election or vote for someone in your community to serve on these committees, which determine the type of programs the county will offer to deliver FSA resources at a local level.

  People’s assemblies. Bring people to testify at town hall meetings, or hold your own people’s assembly and invite politicians to come hear your testimony.

  Allies with influence. Ask influential lobbying organizations to adopt and champion your policy agenda. We have had early successes with the National Young Farmers Coalition, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group.

  Elections. Run for office or work on the campaigns of other changemakers of color, as the organizers in Jackson, Mississippi, did for Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

  Regardless of your strategy, the first step is to clarify your demands and the entity in charge of the decision to meet or reject those demands. The Northeast Farmers of Color Network met to write our policy demands, which were inspired by the work of the HEAL Food Alliance and Strengthening Our Rural Roots by Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald and Sarah Bobrow-Williams.

  Consumer Organizing

  Farmworker rights organizations continue to be at the frontlines of consumer organizing. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) of Florida began resisting declining wages for Mexican, Guatemalan, and Haitian tomato pickers in 1993, using hunger strikes, marches, and work stoppages. They then launched the first-ever farmworker boycott of a major fast-food company, calling for Taco Bell to take responsibility for the human rights abuses in the fields where its produce was harvested. After years of pressure Taco Bell agreed to meet all of CIW’s demands to improve working conditions and wages for Florida tomato pickers. CIW turned to other major purchasers of tomatoes, winning campaigns with Burger King, Whole Foods, Bon Appétit Management Co., Compass Group, Aramark, Sodexo, Trader Joe’s, and Chipotle Mexican Grill. By 2010 CIW had transformed over 90 percent of the Florida tomato industry by convincing the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to sign on to its Fair Food Program, which combines a strict code of conduct with a complaint resolution system, health and safety program, worker-to-worker education, and independent auditing to ensure compliance. CIW also uncovered human trafficking operations on the farms and helped liberate over 1,200 enslaved workers. CIW’s tactics focus on pressuring corporations to change behavior through boycotts and other direct action, rather than depending on laws to change.

  Inspired by the tactics of CIW, dairy workers in Vermont put the pressure on their major buyer, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. There are 1,200 to 1,500 workers in Vermont’s dairy industry, many of whom worked seven days per week, had schedules that prevented sleeping more than a few hours, earned low wages, and had substandard housing. Their Milk With Dignity campaign demanded that workers earn the state minimum wage and have one day off in seven, eight hours of rest between shifts, and housing that included a bed, electricity, and clean running water. They demanded that Ben & Jerry’s pay a premium on their milk to cover the costs of these basic dignities. In 2017 the campaign reached an agreement with the corporation, transforming the lives of thousands of farmworkers across the state.

  UPLIFT

  Delano Grape Strike

  In 1965 Filipino farmworkers demanded a raise to $1.40 per hour for picking grapes. Their union, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AFL-CIO), was denied. When the farmworkers met in a packed hall their president, Larry Itliong, yelled out, “I want those in favor of a strike to stand up with your hand raised.” Every last person stood and every last person walked off the job on September 8.

  Itliong invited the Mexican farmworkers in the region to join their strike. By September 16 the National Farm Workers Association, under the leadership of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, joined the effort. The two unions merged to form the United Farm Workers, and over 2,000 pickers joined the strike. They organized an international consumer boycott of grapes, which brought the industry to its knees. By July 1970 the UFW had succeeded in reaching a collective bargaining agreement with the table-grape growers, affecting in excess of 10,000 farmworkers.

  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw the farmworkers movement and the civil rights movements as one. He wrote to Chavez in 1966, “As brothers in the fight for equality, I extend the hand of fellowship and good will and wish continuing success to you and your members. The fight for equality must be fought on many fronts—in the urban slums, in the sweatshops of the factories and fields. Our separate struggles are really one—a struggle for freedom, for dignity and for humanity.” As he worked to build the Poor People’s Movement, Dr. King met with Chicano leaders including Chavez, Bert Corona, Corky Gonzales, and Reies Tijerina.24

  The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a farmworker rights group on the front lines of consumer organizing. Photo courtesy of CIW.

  The Agricultural Justice Project (AJP) and Domestic Fair Trade Association (DFTA) are working to take CIW’s strategy to the national level. AJP convinces farmers and suppliers to voluntarily adhere to labor standards and fair trade practices in their supply chain, which affords them the right to use the “food justice certified” label. Soul Fire Farm is currently working through the AJP certification process, which guarantees workers freedom of association, living wages, safe and adequate housing, health and safety protections, medical care, sick leave, and family leave. You can contact AJP for support launching or joining a market-based campaign for human rights or environmental justice.

  UPLIFT

  Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union

  Beginning in 1886 Black farmers organized for mutual aid and self-defense in Texas. They were targeted by land sharks, merchants, horse thieves, cattle ranchers, and repressive Black codes. These farmers formed the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union (CFNACU), which peaked at 1.2 million members in 1891. CFNACU provided vocational training,
discount purchasing depots, and marketing support to its members. CFNACU called for a general strike of Black cotton pickers to demand a wage increase from 50 cents to $1 per 100 pounds of cotton. The strike was vehemently opposed by the white Farmers Alliance and was crushed by local vigilantes in the Arkansas delta, who lynched several of the striking workers. After the failure of the general strike, CFNACU began its decline and disbanded in 1896. However, the legacy of mutual aid lived on in the 154 businesses that were part of the 1918 Negro Cooperative Guild, and later in the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Freedom Farm, New Communities, and other Black farmer unions.25

  Mutual Aid and Survival Programs

  “We are about a collective way of doing things,” explained Xavier Brown, a DC-based urban farmer with Soilful City. “We work how ants work. One ant finds food and thousands of ants pull it back to the nest. We work to replicate how root systems work, passing information and food around. My elders have taught me that our theory of change is to mimic nature in how we work together. I could do it myself but that would be taxing and less effective.”

  Xavier Brown was echoing the strategic philosophy of generations of Black farmers, and the central organizing principle in our communities today. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund (FSC-LAF) are our elders and guides in terms of this mutual aid strategy. Founded in 1967 FSC-LAF brings together 70 active cooperative groups with a combined membership of over 20,000 families, primarily in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. They formed the Rural Training & Research Center in Sumter County, Alabama, which teaches agroforestry, credit union management, business planning, cooperative strategy, property law, marketing, value added products, and agricultural skills.26 They also put their money and bodies on the line for one another in defense of land sovereignty. For this powerful work, they earned the 2015 Global Food Sovereignty Prize.