Fighting for Farming Justice

Diversity, Food Access and the USDA

Terri R. Jett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429684531
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze biologiche
• Subtopic: Ecologia

This book provides a detailed discussion of four class-action discrimination cases that have recently been settled within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and have led to a change in the way in which the USDA supports farmers from diverse backgrounds.

These settlements shed light on why access to successful farming has been so often limited to white men and/or families, and significantly this has led to a change for opportunities in the way the USDA supports famers from diverse backgrounds. With chapters focusing on each settlement Jett provides an overview of the USDA before diving into a closer discussion of the four key settlements, involving African American farmers (Pigford), Native Americans (Keepseagle), Woman famers (Love) and Latino(a) farmers (Garcia), and the similarities between each. This title places and emphasis on what is happening in farming culture today, drawing connections between these four settlements and the increasing attention on urban farming, community gardens, farmers markets, organic farming and the slow food movement, through to the larger issues of food justice and access to food.

Fighting for Farming Justice will be of interest to scholars of food justice and the farming arena, as well as those in the fields of Agricultural Economics, Civil Rights Law and Ethic Studies.

1Introduction

Farming and agriculture have always been central to the development of this country and the lives of many families in the United States regardless of background even when many of these families migrated to various regions of the country to escape oppressive conditions and/or to seek greater economic opportunity. Today, still as much as 40% of the U.S. is farmland and about 35 million people are connected to the field of agriculture, whether farming their own land, renting land to farm, or working as farmworkers (About the U.S. Department of Agriculture | USDA, n.d.). At the heart of this foundation is the ongoing issue of sustainability in relationship to food and the ability of collective groups of people to be self-sufficient in the context of a global capitalist system. While the focus of this book is on the United States agricultural arena, we must additionally consider how it connects to a global food system. Eric Holt-Gimenez points out,

The particular role of agriculture in capitalist development was addressed by classical political economists in seminal publications like “The Wealth of Nations,” “An Essay on the Principles of Population” “The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” and “Das Kapital.” Economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo concentrated on the nature of wealth creation, the market, and the differences of power between workers, peasants, landowners, and industrialists. Their concepts of property and commodities, the labor theory of value, land rent, and the creation of surplus value are still foundational to understanding the capitalist agriculture.”

(Holt-Gimenez, 2017)

Land ownership from the very beginning of this republic dictated access into decision-making circles that determined the structure of the United States indicating a certain level of status and, therefore, political and economic power. It was also seen as a means of both sustenance and entrepreneurship with agriculture the primary determinant of progress up until the 20th century and still holds much significance today. It was agriculture that was at the heart of our path toward the industrial revolution, and while we are currently in the midst of the technological revolution, agriculture is still valued and important. In fact, the use of technology now serves as one measure of access and success in farming (USDA - National Agricultural Statistics Service - Census of Agriculture, n.d.). Farmers, especially young farmers use social media for marketing and making connections to other related efforts such as farmer's markets and Community Supported Agriculture, and there are a number of individuals who belong to farming advocacy groups that exchange information amongst one another via social media.

The geographical expansion of the United States, especially the western land expansion in the 19th century with policies of aggressive homesteading measures set the stage for the 1862 establishment of the United States Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.), the “People's Department,” as it was called right from the beginning by President Abraham Lincoln. However, the U.S.D.A. wasn't necessarily of service to all people at its beginnings and neither was the United States' efforts of land expansion. It is no surprise that the U.S.D.A. was established during the time period that the country was in the midst of wrestling with both the economical and moral implications of the slavery system.

“Prior to slavery, capitalist agriculture failed to keep up with the growing demand for cotton because capitalists couldn't force the peasantry to grow it on an industrial scale. In the southern United States, settlers had exterminated and driven off indigenous populations to appropriate their land, a strategy that left them without a workforce. The enslavement and translocation of Africans from West Africa to North America and the Caribbean was capitalism's answer to the labor shortage.”

(Holt-Gimenez, 2017)

The initial establishment of the United States was built on the acquisition of federal land. Federal control of the land meant that the government dictated its usage, distribution, and conservation. Political and economic power had to be wedded from a national position in or for progress to continuous.

Federal land ownership began when the original 13 states ceded their “western” lands (between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River) to the central government between 1781 and 1802. Substantial land acquisition in North America via treaties and purchase began with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and culminated with the purchase of Alaska in 1867. In total, the federal government acquired 1.8 billion acres in North America.

(Alexander, 2007)

In the U.S.D.A. Economic Research Service Report, “U.S. Farmland Ownership, Tenure and Transfer,” Bigelow, Borchers, and Hubbs (2016) write about the significance of farmland accessibility that has continued to shift to a mixture of rented and owned land that “have important implications for land accessibility, particularly for young and beginning farmers.” How land has been maintained, transferred, or lost between generations is part of both the historical narrative and the contemporary struggles that define the agricultural arena. Land determined access to power so much so to the extent that many groups were prevented from accumulating land and/or deliberately had their land taken away through a number of government policies and/or through violent acts in efforts to maintain a predominantly white status quo and to keep more racial- and ethnic-identified marginalized populations in conditions of relative servitude. Historically, this often occurred through racial and class lines in an intersectional manner that largely explains some of the economic inequities that exist today. And it is because of this reason, the agricultural arena and farming, in particular, have a significant social justice component that is at the forefront today, tied to the struggle of a number of these marginalized groups that have especially had disparate relationships with the U.S.D.A. Their ability to farm was key to their survival and the intentional disruption of their efforts has been devastating for many communities.

This is the primary focus of this book – the connection between their struggles to farm in relation to the food justice movement today. How have these groups managed to navigate the systemic policies and structural impediments that were at the very foundation of our agricultural development and what are the possibilities, though they may be limited for transformative and radical changes to take place? It is through understanding the respective cases of the Black, Native American, Latino/Hispanic and women farmers against the U.S.D.A. that help provide critical insight for what needs to occur going forward.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has long been accused of unlawfully discriminating against minority and female farmers in the management of its various programs, particularly in its Farm Service Agency loan programs. Meanwhile, some minority and female farmers who have alleged discrimination by USDA have filed various lawsuits under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Pigford v. Glickman, filed on behalf of African-American farmers, is probably the most widely known, although Native American and female farmers also filed suit in Keepseagle v. Vilsack and Love v. Vilsack, respectively. In addition, a group of Hispanic farmers filed a similar lawsuit against USDA in October 2000. The case, Garcia v. Vilsack, involved allegations that USDA unlawfully discriminated against all similarly situated Hispanic farmers with respect to credit transactions and disaster benefits in violation of the ECOA, which prohibits, among other things, race, color, and national origin discrimination against credit applicants. The suit further claimed that the USDA violated the ECOA and the APA by systematically failing to investigate complaints of discrimination, as required by USDA regulations.

(Feder and Cowan, 2013)

Photo 1.1Rafe & Elnora Taylor at Meldon Avenue Home.

Photo 1.2Rafe and Elnora Taylor – Wedding Day.

Photo 1.3Rafe and brother, Flenore Taylor in front of school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Photo 1.4Rafe and Elnora Taylor well established.

Photo 1.5Elnora Taylor on first day of work at Clorox, Inc.

Photo 1.6Rafe and Elnora Family portrait with all of the children.

My grandfather, Rafe Taylor, Sr., had all the markings of a displaced farmer as a young man of about 30-years-old who migrated from Bossier City, Louisiana to Oakland, California. At the time of his migration, he had a wife, Elnora and five children – (Mildred, Bea, Rafe, Jr., Laura and Amos – though Laura would tell people she was born in “San Francisco”), which he brought to Oakland a year after he was settled, first securing an apartment and then by the time his family came, he and his wife purchased their first home on Filbert Street. Because his father, William Taylor, was so dependent on his labor for their Louisiana farm, my grandfather Rafe Taylor, Sr., gave his father a mule to replace him when he left. After all, he said he “worked him like a mule.”

The time period of his migration was during World War II and his initial job was in the Iron Foundry in Oakland, and after a few years, he was able to secure a position with the City of Oakland as a sewer mechanic, a job he worked at for over 30 years until he retired. Though he was highly skilled, the level of his educational attainment limited his ability to move up with the department. His wife, Elnora migrated a year after Rafe, Sr., had three more children and also worked initially for the Cannery, Granny Goose Potato Chips, and then Clorox, Inc., until she retired, after about 20 years.

A few of Rafe Taylor, Sr.'s 14 brothers followed his lead in migrating to Northern California, a few of them after serving in the military during World War II, with the others and his sisters following later and after their father, William Taylor died. Their mother, Minerva Taylor, was the last to come. “Why did you all leave Louisiana?” I remember asking him one day, shortly before he passed away. He responded, “Because we were tired of having to cross the street every time there was a white person walking toward us on the same side of the street.” He also was looking for better economic opportunities and wanted his children to have a better education then he had in Louisiana.

During one of our family reunions, which took place in Natchitoches, Louisiana my grandfather spotted a decrepit log cabin sitting on top of a grassy hill. He took off running up the hill as if he hadn't just been walking down the road with a cane, many of his grandchildren, including myself running after him. What moved him to react so passionately was that he said the log cabin was the actual location where he and his brothers had gone to school – for him, up to what would be the equivalent of the sixth grade. “We got a good education there,” he stated. In reference to his comment about why he left Louisiana, this was his way of telling me that racism was too much for them to handle daily. Regardless, they were a farming family in Louisiana, a family of 17 children total, and so he and all of his siblings naturally carried their farming skills with them to the very urban environment of Oakland, California.

When Rafe and Elnora Taylor settled into their first house on Filbert Street in West Oakland, he dug up the large front yard lawn and planted a garden right in his front yard with greens, tomatoes and beans among other things, according to my mother, Beatrice Jett and my aunt Laura Johnson, his daughters. His garden was naturally abundant and overflowing and because it was in the front yard, at night people in the neighborhood would come by and help themselves, not realizing or perhaps disregarding that this was a matter of sustenance for his wife and children. Fortunately, the people who lived next door to them, one of the remaining few white families in that area, held a significant portion of the backyard land that included a Blackberry patch that the Taylor children would enjoy. They valued and appreciated Rafe Taylor, Sr.'s gardening/farming talents and also wanted to help so they allowed him to use their backyard land for his garden where he grew collard greens, tomatoes, and an abundance of other vegetables.

After some years, they purchased a second home in the Maxwell Park area of Oakland with a large backyard full of fruit trees and an expansive area to include a vegetable garden. In this backyard, Rafe Taylor, Sr., transformed a relatively small area by farming standards where he planted everything according to the placement of the sun and managed to feed his large family of eight children and countless grand- and great-grandchildren with what he grew with his own hands, organically. Fruit trees were at the top, apple, lemon, and fig, next was a layer of both collard and mustard greens. Then the tomatoes followed as another lower layer beneath the greens and at the very bottom were artichokes, which seemed to thrive in the direct sunlight. There was always a container on the kitchen counter where they collected composting material from kitchen scraps before it became a “process.” It was regenerative, though I never heard my grandfather use that particular term – from the garden to the table – and back to the garden. His extensive garden may have also been considered “organic.” The pathway to his house in the smallish front yard was lined with rose bushes – which he named after the important women in his life – Minerva (his mother), Lucy (his wife's mother) and Elnora (his wife). I often wondered how different things would be if our family had been comfortable remaining on the red soil that was so life-affirming in Louisiana.

So many Black families have similar stories of displacement and migration; a time period known as “The Great Migration,” with patterns of movement that began during the Reconstruction period but reached a significant peak around the 1930s to 1940s driven largely because of the racism that existed at the time, decisions made to uproot, hoping for new economic opportunities and the freedom to succeed. Like my grandfather, they also brought their farming skills and means of survival from rural to urban environments. They carried the trauma of racism and injustice that had kept them in oppressive conditions of which they worked hard to survive, always thinking of better possibilities for future generations. And yet, there were also many Black families and especially Black farmers who remained in the deep south, that were critical to the success of the Civil Rights Movement while organizing and strategizing to hold on to their land against all types of adversity. People often generally think that most Black people in the United States live in urban areas, and many do but there are many who live in rural Black Belt areas of the southern region. The term “Black Belt,” is used to define the richness of the soil but also the predominance of Black populations at the county level. In Alabama, for example, there is a group of counties in the Southeastern part of the state that makes up what we could call “the Black Belt.”

And thus, this book is driven by a premise – that out of the many struggles of farmers of diverse backgrounds and especially those who formed the basis for four alleged discrimination lawsuits and subsequent settlements against the U.S.D.A., known as Pigford I and II, Keepseagle, Garcia, and Love, came contemporary and imaginative ways of addressing food apartheid, food insecurity and food deserts in a movement of food justice efforts and forging more creative aspects of an ever-transformative agricultural and farming arena.

What is meant by terms such as food insecurity, food sovereignty, food apartheid and food justice? It is important to be clear on the specifics of these terms to draw connections between the struggles of the farming groups mentioned and the agricultural/farming arena today. Some aspects of these struggles also connect to issues surrounding climate change, environmental justice or racial ecologies that consider the ability or constraints surrounding the use of biodiversity practices of diverse communities that allow for organic farming practices to facilitate growth. While this text is focused specifically on the area of farming and food justice, no social justice issue can be looked at in a compartmentaliz...