Nestled inside of the Biden administration's American Rescue Plan was a promise of debt relief for socially disadvantaged farmers. Up to 120% forgiveness to BIPOC farmers who had USDA approved loans. The USDA is now facing a class action lawsuit and in July of 2021, seven white farmers from Minnesota and North Dakota joined in.
"The Biden administration passed, secretary of Vilsack in particular, passed a rule that essentially allows for total debt forgiveness for socially disadvantaged, historically socially disadvantaged farmers I believe the phrase is in the law, and, but it specifically excludes white farmers from that relief," said James Dickey, a lawyer representing the Minnesotan and North Dakotan farmers. Compass hasn't been able to reach any of the plaintiffs for comment.
The USDA has broadly defined the term "socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher" as "those who identify as one or more of the following, black, American Indian, Alaska native, Hispanic, Asian, and Hawaiian Pacific Islander."
From our client's perspective, that is essentially present discrimination that is intended to remedy past discrimination and the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause doesn't allow that to kind of roll," said Dckey.
The law that's taking precedence in this class action case was filed in Texas in April, 2021, by Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner. The case was sponsored by America First Legal Foundation, a group co-founded by Steven Miller, a former advisor to Donald Trump. The suit alleges that the USDA proposed program discriminates against white farmers and ranchers, who would otherwise be able to receive this relief if they weren't white. Miller says he's bringing the lawsuit as a private citizen and not in his capacity as agriculture commissioner.
Stephen Carpenter, a lawyer for Farmers Legal Action Group gave a quick background: "The United States Department of Agriculture has a lot of resources, does loan programs, spends a lot of money to help farmers and historically that assistance has very much targeted white farmers. Part of that is not surprising because it's a very old department. It was founded during the Lincoln administration. So the reality is, that would've been a department that really did focus its attention on white people," Carpenter said. "And even after it was no longer legal to do that, the everyday implementation of U.S. Department of Agriculture programs was often discriminatory based on race. And we have excellent records and histories and documentation of that going back many decades and continuing to the very recent times and the present."
Patrice Bailey is the assistant commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. He said that out of Minnesota, 26 million acres of farmland, "24 million of those acres are owned by white farmers. So that lies a disparity that goes between black indigenous people of color, and those with disabilities and veterans to sort of have the other piece that's left."
Assistant Commissioner Bailey said that when he was appointed in 2019, he was asked to do listening sessions throughout the state to learn about the barriers that exclude people from getting involved in agriculture. "What came out of that listening session, all of them actually, was that many of the barriers beyond the land and finances, school loans, mental health, insurance, you know, there was also barriers of being overlooked, not being seen," he said. "These are barriers that continue to happen in underrepresented communities because maybe you don't have that relationship with a lender. The lender does have a lot of power to say yes or no. And we have to also understand that this is a design, this is a system that was built so that there would be profitability in one direction. It's a complete slave mentality, but not in the same way. You're not shackled anymore, but you're still ostracized in a way because you don't have the info, you don't have the equity and you don't have the, you know, frankly the right skin color in order to actually be in the same spaces.
