Federation of Southern Cooperatives

In survey completed by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund a few years ago (2001) and funded by the USDA's Risk Management Agency, we have realized that many of the findings would likely be helpful to other farm groups and we will begin reporting on them periodically. In the project we wanted to assess the progress of Risk Management education and implementation of some risk management tools such as crop insurance.

"Discrimination in Farming by Race, Age and Size of Farm Operation"
Research from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund

ATLANTA....(November 15, 2004) This is the second in a series of releases reporting on research completed in 2001. In this release we will provide the findings on perceptions of discrimination Black farmers have experienced in their relationship with the USDA. We will start each report with brief demographic summaries about the farmers who were interviewed.

Overview: In this survey 338 black farmers throughout the south were interviewed. Here are some of the basic demographics of these black farmer respondents: 90% of the respondents were male; 31% of the respondents were under the age of 49 and 69% were from 50-93 yeas old. 46% had purchased crop insurance in the past 5 years; there was a fairly even distribution of the length time the respondents had farmed with the largest group (24%) having farmed 41 years or more; most of the farmers in the sample (56%) farmed 100 acres or less; most of the farmer (69%) owned from 1 to 100 acres of land; only 20% of the respondents reported receiving an FSA loan in the past 5 years; and 42% said that farming was their principle income.

Risks in Agriculture: The Risk Management Agency for years now has provided information and opportunities for farmers to learn about the 5 major areas of risk in agriculture: financial, marketing, production, legal and human resource risks. We at the Federation recognized, however, that discrimination is another major risk faced by farmers. For that reason we added discrimination by race, age and size of operation in our list of risks.

Discrimination in agriculture by race: It is well documented that Black farmers have experienced discrimination in USDA offices throughout the country. One of the reason Black farmers recently successfully settled their lawsuit against the USDA was because of the lack of access to information, loans and other services and assistance necessary for successful farm management because of their color.

In the survey we asked the respondents: Do you feel you have been discriminated against by USDA agencies because of your race? Not surprisingly, a significant majority (77%) of the respondents felt that they had been discriminated by USDA agencies because of their color.

Discrimination in agriculture by age: Conventional wisdom in farming circles is that farmers are often discriminated against in USDA office because of their age.

In the survey we asked the question: Do you feel you have been discriminated against by USDA agencies because of your age? Not quite half (43%) of the respondents felt discriminated against by age.

Discrimination in agriculture by size of operation: As with age, conventional wisdom is that farmers are often discriminated against because of the size of their operation - that USDA offices are inclined to favor large row crop and export production farmers instead of the small family farmers with diverse production.

In the survey we asked the question: Do you feel you have been discriminated against by USDA agencies because of size of your farm operation? The majority (59%) of the farmers felt they had been discriminated against.

We had expected the high percentages of farmers feeling discriminated against because of race, but still 77% is quite high. We were not sure, however, how they would respond to feeling discriminated against because of the size of their farm operation More than half (59%), however, responded that size did effect the services offered them from USDA. One of the critical examples of lack of programs available for small farmers is crop insurance coverage which is biased toward the large commodity and export farmers such a those growing corn, cotton and soy. The livelihood of small farmers and the diversity of the crops they grow - such as turnip greens, collards squash - is seemingly not a priority if adequate USDA crop insurance coverage is an indicator. Coverage for these crops is simply not available in most parts of the country except through special programs such "Adjusted Gross Revenue" or "Whole Farm Insurance" that is not available yet throughout the south. As most black farmers are small family farmers, race coupled with size of farm operation compounds the lack of services and credit offered by the USDA.

Go to the Federation's website at www.federation.coop for information about our programs.

Note: The Federation, now in its 37th year, assists Black family farmers across the South with farm management, debt restructuring, alternative crop suggestions, marketing expertise and a whole range of services to ensure family farm survivability.