Black farmers will receive a historic payout from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Biden administration announced it will distribute $2.2 billion in financial assistance to 43,000 farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners who were discriminated against in the agency’s farm lending programs.
$1.5 billion of the funding provided under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act will go directly Black farmers, Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of Black Belt Justice Center, said.
“This money will be a lifeline to farmers and ranchers across the country who in the past have been unfairly denied access to USDA lending and safety net programs,” Senator Cory Booker, an advocate for the announced funding, said.
McCurty said that the payout, which will help Black food producers improve their farms, was “a hard-fought, bittersweet victory.”
“I am…saddened that thousands of our legacy farmers transitioned to ancestorhood without receiving any compensation from the USDA for decades of anti-Black racism,” she said.
But to the Black farmers that received the $500,000 maximum payment, McCurty “overjoyed” to see the money in action.
John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, said the payout was “historic” after years of reported discrimination against Black farmers by the USDA’s loan system, an NPR analysis showed.
“Clearly, we have more work to do to restore our Black agricultural land base,” McCurty said, “but with this victory in hand we are walking in the right direction toward reparative justice.”
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