BY EVA BRAIMAN
MT. VERNON, New York-"All I ever wanted to be was a farmer,
but I never knew it would be so difficult," said Leonard
Hunter, president of the New York Chapter of the Black Farmers
and Agriculturists Association (BFAA), speaking in this small
town just north of New York City November 14. More than 70
people came to hear the program, entitled "Saving African
American Farms, Landowners and Communities: The Time is Now."
The featured speaker at the meeting was Gary Grant, national president of the BFAA. He described the conditions facing working farmers who are Black.
Grant cited statistics that illustrate this crisis, including the decades of documented discriminatory lending policies of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the pervasive racist treatment of Black farmers by government agencies, and the lack of technical support, all of which have contributed to the alarming rate of foreclosures on Black family farms.
In 1910 Black farmers owned 15.6 million acres of farmland. By 1982 this figure had declined to 3.2 million. Currently, Black landowners are losing land at rates as high as 9,000 acres per week.
In his wide-ranging presentation, Grant received a standing ovation and enthusiastic shouts of, "Teach on brother." He urged the audience to get involved in the fight against Black land loss, including supporting the $3.5 billion class-action lawsuit being filed by Black farmers against the U.S. government for discriminatory practices.
Grant reminded those assembled of the historic role played by Black farmers in the civil rights movement, particularly in the southern United States, and the need of Black and white farmers to unify to fight against foreclosures.
He implored the audience to reject the "divide and conquer" methods employed by the government against farmers and within the Black nationality.
Contrasting the economic devastation visited on Black farmers in the last decades, Grant described the "obscene profits" being reaped by agribusiness conglomerates such as ConAgra, Cargill, and Continental, whose amassing of land, and growing monopoly control over grain production, agricultural chemicals and technology, red meat slaughter, poultry processing, retail food sales, and finance capital has spelled economic and environmental disaster in the communities where many Black and white farmers once tilled the land.
Grant argued that unlike the giant enterprises like ConAgra, "family farmers are good environmentalists because they would not contaminate the food they themselves eat." He also decried the brutal conditions faced by workers such as those at the Perdue poultry plant in Lewiston, North Carolina.
Grant and his fellow fighters are traveling around and reaching out to workers, youth, and trade union leaders to educate on and win support for the fight of Black farmers.
In a letter to U.S. secretary of agriculture Dan Glickman, Douglas H. Dority, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers wrote, "The UFCW has historic ties with organizations representing America's family farmers...and its 1.4 million members strongly urge the Department, at the bare minimum to support legislation that enables victims of the discrimination...to pursue legal remedies...America's Black family farmers are entitled to their day in court."
Others addressing the Mt. Vernon meeting included David Jones of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Mt. Vernon City Councilman Lyndon Williams, Imam Adams of the Yonkers Islamic Center, Charles Jarvis of the Million Man March Organizations of Westchester, and Sylvia Webb, a nurse and local farm rights activist.
For more information, call the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, P.O. Box 61, Tillery, NC 27877; Tel: (919) 826-3017.
Eva Braiman is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 174.