Contact: Heather Gray or Jerry Pennick
404 765 0991
hlgray@mindspring.com
www.federation.coop

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.

ATLANTA ...(January 31, 2005)  Marketing was clearly a risk for the majority of the farmer respondents in our survey. Only one marketing aspect seemed to work well for the farmers, and that was a reliable source of transportation for their produce - 71% of the respondents said they had a reliable source. It is not known, however, whether the respondents own the source of transportation or contract with others.

Relatively few of the respondents were utilizing cash forward contracts with local elevators (11%), the options market (10%), the futures market (15%), a broker (12%), or a marketing service (21%). Many of these practices are not necessarily relevant for small family farmers, especially for those growing vegetable or fruit produce, but, rather, are geared toward larger row crop farmers.

However, other indicators are a concern regarding the marketing risks faced by these farmers, some of which are as follows: only 18% of the respondents had a written marketing plan; 41% located their market before planting their crops; 24% were grading their produce before shipping; 9% had cooling facilities, and 8% were selling value added products.

Surprisingly, the majority of the respondents were not taking advantage of local markets, as is often expected of small family farmers; 25% were selling to local supermarkets; 3% to local schools/colleges; and 38% were selling to local farmers markets. However, 42% reported selling to commercial outlets; 19% at road side stands; 42% at farmers markets; 15% had a pick your own operation; an 57% placed themselves in the "other" category. Of the farmers in the "other" category, most  (33%) were selling at grain elevators or livestock auctions. Other marketing arenas mentioned were as selling through cooperatives (4%), brokers (6%) and peddling (5%).

Interestingly and importantly, while only 30% of the respondents said they were in a marketing cooperative, 72% of those who were not in a marketing cooperative said they would like to join one. There is clearly a perceived need in the cooperative membership and its benefits as expressed by the respondents.

The above findings reveal that the vast majority of respondents appear to be producing without concrete marketing plans; are not "adding value" to their farm production; do not have infrastructure such as cooling facilities to protect their produce; do not have access to processing facilities; and overall are not a part of groups, such as marketing cooperatives, to strengthen their competition in the market place.

Summary: 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.

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.