One of the most significant changes in the US economy since the beginning of the 20th century is the national abandonment of farming as a household livelihood strategy. This “agricultural transition” is marked by a number of characteristics: the move away from farming by most Americans and the challenging conditions that remaining farmers experience; the decline in the number of farms and farm population; the growth of larger farms vis-à-vis acreage, sales, and real estate capitalization; and the gradual replacement of family with hired labor. The post-World War II period ushered in perhaps the most rapid transformation, particularly by way of New Deal interventions, and their reformulation and erosion over the next few decades. Between 1940 and 1980, for example, the farm population declined ten-fold, the farm numbers declined by more than half, acreage more than doubled, and real average sales increased six-fold. Farmers also experienced periodic crises during key moments within such long term structural change, such as those that took place during the 1980s and in the mid-1990s. Such shifts were linked to the polarization of production. For example, between 1939 and 1987, the market share of sales by the largest 5% of producers increased from 38.3% to 54.5%. Agricultural firms have expanded not just through vertical and horizontal consolidation, as outlined in Part I, they have also done so through production contracts, wherein a farmer raises or grows an agricultural product, including livestock, for such firms. While only about 8.9% of farms operated under production contract in 2012—up from 3% only a decade earlier—they produced 96% of all poultry, 43% of all hogs, and around 25% of all cattle. Contract farming carries with it numerous risks that compromise the long term well-being of producers themselves. Furthermore, vertical grow room most farms cannot fully employ or sustain families. To survive in farming, families have taken off-farm jobs. As of 2013, for example, 87% of farmers’ median household income came from non-farm sources.

The median farm income for operations that specialize in grains, rice, tobacco, cotton, or peanuts, 23% of income came from on-farm sources. Conversely, livestock operations, apart from dairy, have generally not had a positive income from farming. That is, without income garnered by way of off-farm sources, such operations would go negative. As outlined below, the complete lack of profitability of such operations, and the relatively great profitability of grain and other commodity crop operations, cannot be understood as separate from the racialized distribution of operation types, with white producers generally running more profitable grain and other commodity crop operations, and producers of color running less profitable livestock operations. Shifts in agricultural production were tied not only to the polarization of production but also to racial, gender, and economic polarization. For example, although Blacks were able to establish a foothold in southern agriculture post-Emancipation, rural Blacks were virtually uprooted from farming over the next several decades. In 1920, 14% of all US farmers were Black , and they owned over 16 million acres. By 1997, however, fewer than 20,000 were Black, and they owned only about 2 million acres. While white farmers were losing their farms during these decades as well, the rate that Black farmers lost their land has been estimated at two and a half to five times the rate of white-owned farm loss. Furthermore, although between 1920 and 2002, the number of US farms shrank—from 6.5 million to 2.1 million, or by 67%—the decline was especially steep among Black farmers. Specifically, between 1920 and 1997, the loss of US farms operated by Blacks dropped 98%, while the loss of US farms operated by whites dropped 65.8%. As outlined above, such shifts have been attributed to the general decline of small farms, land erosion, boll weevil infestations of cotton, New Deal farm programs geared toward white landowners, postwar cotton mechanization, repressive racial and ethnic relations, and the lure of jobs and relative safety in the North.

Remaining Black farmers were not only older and poorer than others, they also continued to disproportionately face structural discrimination with regard to land ownership and access to federal support, whether because of ineffectiveness, discrimination in implementation, poor design, lack of funding, or unintended shortcomings. The following section focuses on three sets of Farm Bill programs in particular and elaborates upon the history of each as they relate to racial and economic inequity, particularly in terms of income and wealth, access to program benefits, land access, access to positions of power, and degree of democratic influence.Farm Service Agency Lending Programs and the Farm Bill Discrimination by the USDA and FSA Loan Distribution Program is among the most significant causes of limited access to, and loss of, farmland by people of color. Specifically, lending program discrimination has undermined the economic capacity of farmers of color to anticipate and respond to rapid consolidation and specialization, such as limited capacity to adopt scientific and technological innovations in agricultural production, and greater vulnerability to price volatility.Toward this end, allegations of unlawful discrimination against farmers of color in the management and local administration of USDA lending programs—and the USDA’s limited response to such allegations—have been long-standing and well-documented. For example, in 1965, the US Commission on Civil Rights found evidence of discrimination in the USDA’s treatment of employees of color and in its program delivery. Furthermore, in the early 1970s, the USDA was found intentionally forcing farmers of color off their land through its loan practices. In 1982, the US Civil Rights Commission again found evidence of continued discrimination actively contributing to the decline in minority farm ownership. Despite such findings, in 1983, only one year later, President Reagan pushed for budget cuts that ultimately eliminated the USDA Office of Civil Rights, the primary body for addressing such claims of discrimination. 

Even after the USDA Office of Civil Rights was restored in 1996 during the Clinton Administration, discrimination in the lending programs continued for years. Although the USDA officially prohibits discrimination, the structure for the election of FSA county, area, and local committees that decide who receives loans and under what terms facilitates continued racial discrimination. Toward this end, a 1997 USDA Office of Civil Rights report observed that FSA county committees operate as closed networks and are disproportionately comprised of white men, noting that, in 1994, 94% of the county farm loan committees included no women or people of color. As of 2007, such trends continue, with just 90 Black committee members among a total 7,882 committee members around the country, slightly over 1%. Decades of discrimination and lack of access to such crucial positions have sparked several class-action lawsuits by women farmers and by various groups of farmers of color. Only recently has the Farm Bill attempted to address a major cause of racially discriminatory FSA lending program outcomes by targeting the lack of people of color within FSA committees. Specifically, it was not until a provision, Section 10708, in the 2002 Farm Bill that the com-position of FSA county, area, and local committees were required to be “representative of the agricultural producers within the area covered by the county, area, or local committee,” and to accept nominations from organizations representing the interests of socio-economically marginalized communities. Furthermore, a provision, Section 1615, of the 2008 Farm Bill required county or area committees that are themselves undergoing rapid consolidation to develop procedures to maintain representation of farmers of color on such committees. It was not until early 2012, however, that federal regulations were made consistent with legislative changes. Because of the historic discrimination against farmers of color, and other structural barriers to land ownership for people of color, cannabis racks the population of agricultural producers is already heavily skewed toward white men. Thus, such measures to guarantee FSA committees are representative of agricultural producers in any particular region fall short in their attempts to address the acutely historical causes and outcomes of structural racialization that have upheld white land ownership in particular.The second major channel among the Farm Bill and other federal food and agricultural policies that have played a historic and ongoing role in structural racialization is the Farm Bill’s commodity programs, which have undergirded white farmland ownership at the expense of farmland ownership by people of color. While the FSA lending programs have upheld white farmland ownership amidst increasing consolidation and specialization, the Farm Bill commodity programs uphold white farmland ownership by way of increasing consolidation and specialization. Specifically, increasing agricultural specialization and consolidation—due in part to federal agricultural policy and corporate control, and increased mechanization, fertilizer use, and genetic modification—have upheld white farmland ownership because of both the historic access to prime farmland afforded to white farmers as well as the commodity support programs that are most applicable to the crops grown on such farmland. Limited access to prime farmland, and thus limited access to commodity support programs in conjunction with limited access to federal lending programs as outlined above, has compromised the possibility of farmland ownership for people of color. Historically, people of color were not only excluded from land ownership, but when land ownership was in sight, access to the best farmland was largely out of reach. 

After Emancipation, for example, chronic indebtedness kept the primarily Black population of sharecroppers tied to the same land, neither able to resist the demands and directions of their employers nor able to accrue enough wealth to buy their own land. Although some were able to garner the financial means to break such predatory cycles of debt and purchase their own land, few Blacks could afford to achieve ownership of land with the richest soil, including the notorious “Black Belt” itself, between Georgia and Arkansas. Rather, most Black-owned farms were on more marginal lands in the upper and coastal South, where Black farmers often had to supplement the low yields and profits with sharecropping on more substantial white-owned lands or with outside labor. The best opportunities available to farmers of color, Black or otherwise, on such land tended and remain to be specialty crops and livestock. As of 2012, for example, 63.6% of Asian American farmers, compared to only 8.5% of white farmers, grew fruits and vegetables. Moreover, as of 2012, 46.8% of Black farmers, compared to 29.1% of white farmers, raised beef cattle. Conversely, as of 2012, white farmers grow 98.6% of all grain and oilseed crops. Furthermore, livestock and specialty crops, including fruits and vegetables, are not eligible for these commodity programs, leaving farmers of color with less government support. Specifically, the current agriculture funding structure, from research funding to crop subsidies, and to conservation programs, as will be outlined in Part IV, is heavily weighted to support the large-scale production of commodity crops—among them, wheat, corn, soybeans, and others—crops that are primarily grown by white farmers on the highest quality farmland. Thus, as a result, as of 2012, 40% of white farmers receive government payments while only 30% of Black farmers receive government payments. Furthermore, white farmers that do receive payments receive an average of $10,022 per farm, while Black farmers that receive payments receive an average of $5,509 per farm. Farmers of color, and new immigrant farmers in particular, often grow high-value, labor-intensive horticultural products on small plots of land, which also receive less government support. In 2012, small-scale farmers received an average of $5,003 per farm while large-scale farmers received an average of $47,732 per farm. Perhaps most significantly, as of 2012, 97.8% of all government payments are given to white farmers. According to a 2012 USDA Economic Research Service study, the distribution of commodity-related payments—including federal crop insurance indemnities—to US farmers has shifted toward larger farms as part of the trend of increasing consolidation of farming operations, ensuring that those who have historically benefited from exclusionary practices benefit further. Significantly, because the operators of larger farms generally have higher incomes than those of smaller farms, the shift of commodity-related payments to larger farms led to a shift of payments to higher income households. For example, in 1991, households with incomes over $54,940 received 50% of commodity payments, households with incomes greater than $115,000 received 25% of commodity payments, and households with incomes over $229,000 received 10% of commodity payments. Since then, the distribution of payments has increasingly favored higher income households: by 2009, households earning over $89,540 received 50% of commodity payments, households with incomes greater than $209,000 received 25% of commodity payments, and households with incomes of at least $425,000 received 10% of commodity payments.