The Lowcountry’s climate is humid, but mild, and rarely experiences frost. With the right methods, farmers can yield two harvests of indigo in one planting season. So, on St. Helena, King Comer learned to cultivate the plant from the descendants of those people once exploited in the marshlands for their agricultural skill and labor. This is how she found herself approaching a brigade of mosquitos, eager to impart their own lessons. The artist braced herself. 

“I thought I was like Johnny Appleseed,” she said, likening her early naïveté to the gusto of the roving 19th century nurseryman. Now, she realized, “Oh. I’ve erred. This [indigo] will die before I get into this.”

Indigo is a perennial plant and member of the bean family. With its woody stems, it grows densely like a weed and can reach between three and six feet tall. From October through May, bursts of blush-colored flowers erupt, clustered like jewels amid slender fruit pods that curve upward, bearing miniature black seeds. When the smooth green blades of its branches are gathered and steeped, they provide the dark, rich indigo dye that clings to hands and fingertips immersed in its liquor. 

Almost two decades later, King Comer has learned from her mistakes: She now wears tall, sturdy boots when working in the garden, and lots of coconut oil—“mosquitos don’t like it.” She has also since moved her studio to Wadmalaw Island, a lush, green expanse of trees and rushing creeks about 80 miles north of St. Helena. She lives there, too, taking temporary shelter in a camper van, alongside plentiful birds and peckish deer, whom the neighbors gently remind her have long inhabited the six acres where she plans to build a permanent residence and education space. Among the sage live oak trees that ornament the landscape, she plans to grow three species of indigo and sweetgrass seedlings, eager to see what the harvest informs. 

The artist-turned-farmer is one of a few Lowcountry textile and fiber artists who are using natural and indigenous materials tied to the history of the Americas and African enslavement, such as indigo, sweetgrass, and cotton, to create and preserve African American material culture through agriculture and artistic expression. 

Growing agricultural products was not the start nor end point any of these artists had necessarily envisioned. Yet each felt called to sow and reap from the land the raw materials that inspire their work, as a form of cultural preservation, and in at least one case, because the sustainability of their art form may very well depend on it. 

“Everything that I’m doing is coming from the land. I’m growing it, I’m processing it, I’m honoring ancestry,” said King Comer. 

When I visited in February, pieces of King Comer’s textile dye works were on display at the Charleston exhibit Griots of Cotton, Indigo & Clay, a permanent collection commissioned by Acres of Ancestry/Black Agrarian Fund, a group that promotes African American land-based tenure and traditions throughout the South. Local artist Torreah “Cookie” Washington curated the show, which ran at the City Gallery, a two-story building with floor-to-ceiling glass paneled windows overlooking the Cooper River from the city’s French Quarter. 

The river separates Charleston proper from Mt. Pleasant and a handful of so-called settlement communities where African Americans built homes and founded towns after Emancipation. A bridge constructed to join the two almost a century prior has been consequential in both the promotion and decline of the coiled basketry craft practiced in these communities, a tradition that predates American slavery.

More than a dozen Black women artists were featured in the fiber and textile exhibit, employing quilting, appliqué, dye work, and basket-sewing techniques to invoke themes of agrarianism, land stewardship, and cultural preservation. A shrine entitled A Prayer for Flying Africans, and bearing an indigo-dyed, shroud-like cloth marking the names of Black farmers who had joined the decades-long Pigford v. Glickman class-action discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and died without receiving fair compensation, honors their legacy.

“We had to turn to the artists for them to speak in a language that could tap into the hearts and minds of people to really join us in this fight to dismantle anti-Black racism within USDA. That’s the vision of Griots of Cotton, Indigo & Clay,” said Tracy Lloyd-McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center, a sister organization to Acres of Ancestry, focused on land justice and legal advocacy. “If we steward the land, do we also not have a responsibility to be stewards of Black agrarian material culture?” she asked. 

The exhibit will run from April through early October at the I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium at South Carolina State, a historically Black land grant university in Orangeburg, a little over an hour northwest of Charleston. There, the museum’s executive director, Frank Martin, presides over an impressive collection of cultural artifacts: the original photographic panels from the controversial 1969 Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit “Harlem on My Mind;” Cecil Williams’s visual documentation of the Civil Rights Movement; a collection of Andy Warhol polaroids, among African sculptures and African American art. 

King Comer previously showcased at the Stanback, which is how she and Martin came to think about applying for grants to experiment with indigo. Martin had a vision for a project that could involve multiple colleges, students and professors of various disciplines, community stakeholders, and perhaps most importantly, local government. As part of a proposal to study the feasibility of indigo as a Lowcountry cash crop for small-scale producers, Martin approached farmers and artists, asking if they would consider growing a portion of the crop in different varieties and environments, under varying conditions—sand, loam, clay. 

It may seem like a stretch for an art museum director to seek an agricultural grant, but Martin was quick to note that I.P. Stanback is also a planetarium, grounded in scientific exploration, and its founding director Leo Twiggs is a Lowcountry artist who paints with indigo dye on cotton—a political statement about the region’s history and heritage, Martin said. He has his own agricultural background as well, describing himself as a “farm kid” who grew up working on cotton and tobacco fields. 

“The idea is to help our students in South Carolina and the South look at these traditions that were brought into this hemisphere by their African forbearers, and to be more aware of the importance of those individuals in the early economic development of this state. This was, at one time, the wealthiest state in the 13 colonies largely because of African craftspeople who grew rice and indigo, and later, cotton,” Martin said. He’s hoping to submit a USDA grant proposal by late fall or early winter.

Like so many details related to the history of the Lowcountry, the value of rice is integral to this story. When British colonists arrived in South Carolina in 1670, they experimented with a variety of crops such as cotton, olives, and tobacco to determine which could yield the most money and deliver the best return on capital investments. By 1690, rice had emerged as the state’s most profitable crop, and one without competition throughout the other British colonies. By 1720, it was the state’s primary export. But as tensions increased between England and Spain over the following two decades, eventually exploding into a war that made shipping rice across the Atlantic to England extremely dangerous and expensive, planters and provincial authorities became eager to diversify their market. 

“The history of indigo in South Carolina is intimately connected to the cultivation of rice,” said Nic Butler, historian at the Charleston Public Library. “The reason indigo became a commercial crop is because of the collapse of rice prices in the late 1730s and early 1740s. Around this time, people in South Carolina are scrambling to come up with another crop they can ship out to the other colonies, if not across the Atlantic.”

“On the Sea Islands you’ve got a bit of a microclimate that’s different from the mainland areas—coastal or inland areas. One of the many reasons that people decided to settle on indigo as a secondary crop in the 1740s was because it will grow on a variety of soils that are not really great soils—and specifically—it’s a different kind of soil than rice. Rice is a swampy process, but indigo has to be on high land,” said Butler. 

Harvesting the crop and transforming it into dye is also extremely labor-intensive. In South Carolina’s plantation economy, every six or seven acres of indigo planted required a system of vats used to steep the leaves and extract and process the dye into dried powder cakes that could be shipped long distances. Despite the free human labor planters exploited, those infrastructure costs subtracted from profits. Butler cites a 1755 essay from Gentleman’s Magazine of London that describes the process of cultivating 50 acres of indigo as requiring 15 “hands,” enslaved men and women, to maintain the crop, and at least 25 “very able hands” to process the dye. 

“A lot of people have this kind of, what I call a Gone With the Wind idea of what a plantation is—just crazy,” Butler said. “A plantation is a labor camp.… Rice and indigo are very labor-intensive. The only way to make that labor-intensive process profitable was to employ unfree labor. Without slavery, they would never have considered doing this.”

This is a challenge that modern-day growers must contend with. Often, amateurs plant small plots in order to reap a manageable harvest. Charleston-based David Harper, treasurer of the International Center for Indigo Culture, a nonprofit, is married to an indigo artist and has, since 2015, grown a tropical South American variety of the plant—the same variety cultivated by enslaved Africans in South Carolina for its long-lasting pigment—to use in his wife’s dye work and workshops. He is also one of the candidates that Martin at SC State, has enlisted to join his proposed trial to study the crop’s feasibility. Independently, Harper has also secured funding, through a USDA value-added producer grant, to work with small farmers who share an interest in reviving its use. He and his wife currently have between 600 and 700 plants divided between two quarter-acre plots.

“Every year for the last seven years we’ve left crop in the field because we just couldn’t process it,” he said. That’s one reason why you don’t see indigo dye houses popping up all over the place. Inevitably, you’re doing this really laborious process with almost the same techniques that were used by enslaved people on plantations in the 1700s. Even with better equipment it’s still a bottleneck, it’s still inefficient. That’s one reason we’re going for grants to try to streamline that process so that small farms could benefit from a more efficient production system.”

Like Lowcountry indigo cultivation, the sewn sweetgrass baskets featured in Griots of Cotton, Indigo & Clay by artist Georgette Sanders are borne out of African knowledge and American enslavement. The baskets, contemporarily sewn from native sweetgrass—so ubiquitous with South Carolina history that the state named them the official Lowcountry handicraft in 2006—evolved from the 17th and 18th century plantation baskets made from hardy bulrush bonded with white oak splints or soft palmetto, and fashioned into fanner baskets, used by enslaved Africans to winnow rice. 

Sanders learned to sew them about four decades ago from an aunt. Like so many artists, she said she receives visions of inspiration in her dreams, and recounted awaking abruptly one night about 17 years ago, washed in images of clay. Then newly married, her unsuspecting husband quickly realized his ignorance. 

“He said, ‘You don’t sleep much, huh?’” Sanders tilted her head, appearing briefly apologetic through a burst of laughter. Since then, she’s incorporated smooth, kiln-fired clay into her handsewn basketry. The materials Sanders employs, clay and beadwork, are not tradition but invention. It’s an aspect of the craft that she treasures: the evolution of an object once made for function now interpreted as artwork.

“Each generation shifts. It’s no longer a bread dish, or a set of coasters,” she said. “Your older customers are asking for things that may be products gone by, and they need to preserve them because it may never get back to someone making pot rests. Grandmother may have done that, and mom may have made purses or hats. Now, you’re thinking of big, broad, massive pieces, being in museums. You’ve got the art coming out. Each phase was beautiful for that generation. I’ve started to teach my granddaughters, and I can’t wait to see what they do. If you bought a basket 30 years ago, you really need to be investing in one now just to see how it has evolved.”

There are, however, limits to innovation. Most urgent: extinction. 

Basketry has long been a means of economic self-sufficiency throughout the Lowcountry’s African American communities. There exists a well-established history of enslaved people using this skill to barter goods and earn income to purchase or maintain their freedom, as well as to escape. A year before the Civil War ended, an enslaved man named Jack Frowers made headlines when he wove grasses and rushes to construct “a basketry boat,” using cotton to caulk it and tree gum to waterproof it; then sailed his way to freedom, escaping to the Union-occupied side of South Carolina’s Port Royal Sound. 

“Nothing produced in the Lowcountry has had the power to evoke South Carolina’s African inheritance over such a long period of time as has the coiled basket,” historian Dale Rosengarten writes in the book Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art.

Yet today, despite the rise and proliferation of e-commerce and digital shopping platforms, it’s gotten much harder for many sewers to make a living selling sweetgrass baskets. To understand why, a drive up Highway 17 North from Charleston to Mt. Pleasant, over the Cooper River Bridge was instructive. 

With paving of Highway 17 and completion of the Cooper River Bridge in 1929, basket sewers from settlement communities had a means to reach customers directly. They began to display their baskets on chairs and crude highway-side stands, advertising to drivers. By 1949, 31 stands were identified along a two-mile stretch of the highway.

In the aftermath and clean up of debris from Hurricane Hugo, which hit South Carolina in 1989, residential and commercial development in the area exploded. Between 2009 and 2013, a five-mile stretch of the highway was widened further, from four to six lanes. Ironically, the road now dubbed “The Sweetgrass Basket Makers Highway” doesn’t support much basket-selling. The majority of stands were moved and replaced, and it can be dangerous for drivers to attempt to pull off on the side of the road. Sweetgrass habitats continue to be cleared to make way for gated condos and housing developments, while the borders of land once considered part of African American settlement communities continue to shrink. 

When, in the 1980s, Rosengarten joined a project to interview basket makers about their craft, she asked sewers what they felt was the most serious threat to the tradition. 

“Everyone, every single one said, ‘The difficulty of finding sweetgrass, that’s the most pressing problem we have,’” she said. “That started in the 1970s already.”

Sewers came up with a workaround. They began reintroducing bulrush, which was abundant and used historically to create plantation work baskets. Researchers, most notably Bob Dufault, a former Clemson horticulturist, undertook massive decades-long efforts to study and repopulate the indigenous, perennial grass. Those efforts yielded mixed results; as Rosengarten noted, there is an abundance of the grass in Mt. Pleasant and along highway dividers and coastal areas today, but much of it is decorative and too brittle to sew with. 

While this is still a problem, she now believes that development poses the greatest threat. 

“It’s a full-on assault,” said Rosengarten. “This rampant development is really threatening the communities themselves where these sweetgrass basket makers live. At the same time, the young people in those families have lots of competing activities and interests. There are very few teenagers that are going to sit around with their moms and grandmas selling baskets like in the old days. So it’s becoming even harder to pass the tradition on to the next generation.” 

In the decades preceding the further widening of Highway 17, Mt. Pleasant’s population more than doubled, yet virtually all of its new residents were white, said Rosengarten. In 1990, Black people accounted for about 16 percent of the population. By 2000 they numbered less than half of that. As of 2020, Black people represented only 4 percent of the town’s residents. 

Kennedy Bennett was born and raised in Mt. Pleasant, where she grew up among a community of sewers: her mother and grandmother, church members, neighbors. It’s a skill the Yale student has not yet mastered, but not for lack of trying. Though much of the development that took place in the area came long before she was born, she’s old enough to recognize the changes that have materialized since she was in secondary school. 

“The community I grew up in was mostly Black. The houses that were there had been there for a really long time. Even if I didn’t know the elders personally, they knew who I was because they knew my mom and my grandparents. Now, driving around some of the settlement communities, you can tell they’re being gentrified. Dynamics have changed. There are huge apartment buildings and parking garages that obstruct the views,” Bennett said. 

“Land that used to be publicly available where sweetgrass grows, basket makers can no longer access because it’s now private property and there are trespass notices, or there’s a house there.”

Dufault, the former Clemson researcher who devoted years in efforts to repopulate sweetgrass, has encouraged home and landowners to grow it wherever they can. Sanders, the sweetgrass and clay artist, is trying her hand at it. She will plant grasses behind her studio, not far from the towering oak tree where she takes shade with her grandchildren, dictating Gullah language lessons in McClellanville, further north of Mt. Pleasant; an area where the weavers who have not abandoned their stands have migrated toward in an attempt to beat the traffic. She will also cultivate sweetgrass on a patch of her husband’s family land.

Small, experimental, yet historically rooted farming like this, is how many artists are attempting to explore and preserve African American heritage. 

Textile artist LaChaun Moore is a Maryland native and Parsons School of Design graduate who moved from Harlem to the small, unincorporated community of Pineland, a little over 80 miles west of Charleston, to begin farming indigo and naturally colored cotton in 2018. She explores the connections between the natural dyes and fiber making methods she learned about in the classroom, and how they relate to Indigenous and African American cultures in the South. 

At Parsons, Moore studied integrated design. She described it as a program where students could build the focus they wanted their work to have.

“Most of us were textile artists who aren’t necessarily interested in runway shows, maybe not super interested in celebrity culture, but love garment making and the history of fashion,” she said. “Or come from a culture that has really strong textiles and want to find a way to bring what they know about textiles into a commercial garment making industry. I’ve always been interested in clothing and history, specifically uniforms. I make garments, but I also make installations.”

In Pineland, Moore began her experimentation by dividing the indigo and naturally colored cotton in shades of green and brown over about a quarter-acre for each. 

“I planted the indigo at least three times, and it wasn’t until the third that I actually got the seeds to germinate,” she said. Moore had grown produce in community gardens in New York City where she was used to working with dirt. “South Carolina has sandy, loamy soil, which is completely different. It has very little nutrients, but it’s the perfect soil for the crop. I just had to learn how to plant it.”

She learned that she had to plant the seeds shallow, rather than dig a deep hole and cover it. “You don’t want to smother the seeds,” Moore said. To make sure they opened up, she soaked them in a bowl of hot water the evening before planting. This makes them “sweat and swell,” opening up the case of the seed and increasing the chance it will grow into a plant. Once you see established leaves, she said, they can virtually fend for themselves, though they do require consistent watering and nutrients. 

That was before the pandemic, when Moore returned to her childhood home, longing for family. In March, she returned to South Carolina, this time to Johns Island, less than 30 minutes west of Charleston, where she aims to increase her planting to an acre of indigo and half an acre of naturally colored cotton, in addition to growing some medicinal herbs, along with birdhouse and luffa gourds. 

In a way, the artists’ foray into agriculture represents a new iteration in their artistic development. Art is, at its core, experimentation. A process that facilitates discovery, and ultimately leads to new forms of expression. In that way, the two seemingly disparate spheres intersect. As farmers and advocates work to stop the acceleration of Black land loss and material culture, these artists have become part of that fight, holding fast to the values and traditions borne from Black agrarianism. 

Additional reporting contributed by Talia Moore and Tricia Vuong.

The post Artists turn to agriculture to preserve African American heritage and legacy in South Carolina’s Lowcountry appeared first on The Counter.

The research gap

In 2021, the USDA announced $25 million to state Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Networks (FRSAN) to build crisis hotlines, establish anti-suicide trainings, and offer free or low-cost counseling, among other services. It was an important step toward recognizing the emotionally grueling, often isolating nature of farm work. But it did little to respond to the needs of Black farmers, who tend to operate smaller farms, face increased economic pressure, and are routinely exposed to racism in agriculture and beyond. Of the 50 FRSAN projects USDA funded in 2021, only 7 programs—in Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Rhode Island—pledge to make efforts to accommodate the specific needs of communities of color. 

It’s yet another indication that the bulk of U.S. research on farming and mental or behavioral health and stress focuses on white farmers. And while that may partly be a function of demographics—Black farmers make up 1 percent of growers nationwide, a stat that itself testifies to the exclusionary force of systemic racism in agriculture—important research or diagnostic tools fail to be race-sensitive. Without these mechanisms, it’s difficult to provide informed treatment that responds to the specific needs of Black farmers and could improve their physical and mental well-being. 

The Farm/Ranch Stress Inventory, created by psychology doctoral student Charles K. Welke in 2002, is a tool that assesses stress, satisfaction and perceived social support among farmers and ranchers. It asks dozens of questions to assess a farmer’s anxiety level and is sometimes adapted for studies of farmer well-being. But its questions focus mostly on financial and family matters; while it inquires about conflict with relatives or community, no question mentions race or racism specifically. In another example, a 2021 Farm Bureau-commissioned study of 2,000 rural Americans found that farmers and farm workers were significantly more likely to have said their stress increased in the last year than their non-farming neighbors. But the insurance and lobbying giant told The Counter that it did not analyze its data by race. 

Laketa Smith manages the Farmers of Color Network of the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI-USA). In collaboration with N.C. State University, she and North Carolina-based RAFI are conducting an ongoing study of farmer mental health and financial stress. Unlike many other studies, that research is intentionally oversampling farmers of color. Though the study won’t conclude until later this year, it will interview 15 Black and Indigenous farmers, respectively, in addition to the same number of white growers (a future iteration will include Latinx subjects). 

While final results aren’t in, Smith said that there’s no indication that suicide is higher among either group. Still, preliminary results suggest that chronic stress is a feature of life for many Black farmers, and that stress can manifest in a variety of ways, from family conflict or separation to substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and ill physical health. 

“Pride is the flip side of shame, and [when money problems happen and land loss is possible], there’s a lot of shame over being in that position,” Smith said. “Farming is often not [simply] what they do. It’s who they are. They’re fourth or fifth generation. And sometimes they think ‘This land’s been in the family for years, and I got us in trouble.'” 

Racism as risk factor

It’s a realm of lived experience that’s also established science: Being subjected to racism is unhealthy. Even encountering the more subtle, daily varieties can be stressful—and, over time, that stress can impact mental and physical health outcomes in concrete ways. A 2013 article in The Atlantic summarized the current state of the medical literature, which draws links between discrimination and increased rates of hypertension, the common cold, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and even general mortality. One study of 30,000 participants found that racism-induced stress is directly related to poorer physical and mental health. It’s a phenomenon that social psychologist Nancy Krieger calls “embodied inequality”—and these damaging linkages have only become better established in recent years. 

“The perception of racism, that feeling can have an impact on psychological well-being,” said Telisa Spikes, a cardiovascular researcher at Emory University who has conducted studies on the impacts of financial and racial stressors on African American health. “Your body responds by going into fight or flight mode—blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up. When you’re constantly in this hypervigilant state it can have a negative impact on health.”

Spikes describes hypervigilance as a heightened response to prior racial trauma that leads African Americans to anticipate negative or discriminatory experiences when they are in predominantly white spaces. 

“You have this stigmatized status as a Black person where you feel you always have to be constantly on watch,” she said. 

Epidemiologist Camara Jones has long made the case that racism is a public health crisis. Notably, she has called on fellow researchers to prioritize data collection by race, urging them to focus their attention on the root causes of racial differences in health outcomes. 

“When we collect data by race, our findings most often reveal significant race-associated differences in health outcomes,” Jones wrote in a 2001 article published in the Journal of American Epidemiology. “The differences are so ubiquitous across organ systems, over the life span, and over time that they do not surprise us or seem to require explanation. Indeed, only when there is a White excess in disease burden, as with suicide, is our professional interest piqued.”

More recently, researchers have continued to probe the role that racism plays in lowering Black Americans’ life expectancy. A 2020 Auburn University study concluded that stress caused by experiencing racism accelerates aging at the cellular level; while a study published by Georgia State University in 2019 found that experienced over time, racism and long term anxiety could “wear and tear down body systems,” weighting the body’s allostatic load—the lifelong build up of stress—and putting African Americans at greater risk for chronic illness. 

“Health cannot be separated from the social environment. Many of the disparities that we see are a result of the social environment. And going back to clinical research, you cannot address problems without highlighting the racial demographic and the role that social determinants play in contributing to these disparities,” Spikes said. “Racism is now listed as a fundamental cause of disparities. It may not be experienced in the form of interpersonal racism—I’m going to charge you a higher price because of the color of your skin—but it’s more of the institutional and systemic racism. The trickle-down policies that derive from that is what has negative implications for health: not being able to afford housing in a good school district if you have children; not being able to get a loan for a mortgage,” said Spikes. 

Those risk factors are only magnified and exacebated within the context of farming, where discriminatory individuals, processes, and systems can continually threaten one’s livelihood and land. Combine U.S. agriculture’s institutionalized racism with the profession’s inherent volatility, and there’s an argument that Black farmers are at heightened risk for all manner of stress-related ailments. 

It happened to Lucious Abrams. The 68-year-old Georgia farmer was denied compensation as a claimant to 1997’s Pigford v. Glickman racial discrimination class action lawsuit against the U.S. government. He has filed numerous legal measures since then to delay foreclosure, and rents his farmland to neighbors to keep the taxes paid. After three decades wrangling with USDA, his body became a vessel of agony and apprehension. 

“I had kidney failure. I had a blood vessel burst up in my colon. My wife had a nervous breakdown. There’s no way to tell you the trauma that we have been through over the years. Through God’s grace and his mercy … that’s the only way I know how [we’ve survived],” said Abrams. “It’s been an absolute nightmare.”

Kentucky State University economist and rural sociologist Marcus Bernard worked with farmers in Alabama’s Black Belt region as the former director of a rural training and research center for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit association of about 20,000 mostly Black farmers and landowners. While completing his PhD at the University of Kentucky, Bernard examined how racism, institutional racism, and class conflict affected Black male farmers. His research identified high levels of acute stress in both African American men and women farmers, typically wives of the male subjects he interviewed. 

The long and well-documented history of Black mistreatment at the hands of the USDA, its partners, and agricultural colleagues also produces well-founded anxieties that bias will put more roadblocks in Black farmers’ way. 

“When you think about a picture of whites farming [and] then think about a picture of Blacks in agriculture, those are two very different experiences,” said Bernard. “The picture with Blacks in agriculture is marred by stigma and labels: a feeling like ‘Someone is always out to get me.’ Like ‘I’m not going to get a fair shake.’ Either ‘I’m going to get shorted on my price,’ ‘Somebody is after my land,’ or ‘I may not get the financing that I need.’”

For decades, USDA and associated lenders withheld critical loans from Black farmers on the basis of race—only one factor among many that gave white farmers an unfair advantage, and a shorter path to profit. Today, countless hurdles remain, from fierce, hyperlocal cronyism that excludes these farmers, to price manipulation that drives down their profits and earnings, and excessive collateral required to secure loans that put them at risk of losing everything if they fall into debt—a shameful legacy that is literally written across Black farmers’ bodies. 

For 26-year-old farmer Tamarya Sims, the anxiety lies not in the fear of dispossession—but in the fear that she may never own land at all. Sims is a landless Black farmer in Asheville, North Carolina. By day, she works for a land trust, managing chickens and bees on a community farm. She runs her own business, Soulfull Simone Farm, on the side. The urban flower and herbal farm takes up less than half an acre of rented land. 

Sims, who experiences anxiety related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), hopes to one day own 60 acres of forested land she envisions as a “healing space” where she can grow herbs and plants, and visitors of color can attend workshops and feel welcome. She describes the distress she deals with as threefold.  

“There’s the stress of being a farmer, then there’s the stress of being a Black farmer, and then of being a landless farmer,” she said. Added to the anxiety she feels, these stressors can make it difficult for her to focus, sapping her energy and ability to solve problems that may arise on the farm. 

As a Black female agriculturalist in an overwhelmingly white area, Sims has experienced strong feelings of alienation. When she spoke out in the wake of George Floyd’s death, she became instantly and uncomfortably recognizable in her community. 

But invisibility, rather than hypervisibility, has been the norm for her. When white visitors stop by the community farm, they often pass her wordlessly, seeking out the first white face they can find as an authority. When she was shopping for her own tractor, she brought a white male associate with her to the dealership, for fear she wouldn’t be taken seriously or get a fair deal. The sales agent spoke exclusively to the white man and refused to look her in the eye, she said. Knowing she must enlist the same tactic in her search to acquire land is upsetting and tiresome. 

“One of the main recurring things I’ve went through is being on land and folks seeing me and thinking that I don’t belong just because I’m Black. Even at my job, I’ve had people slowing down in their cars to see what I’m doing.” If they come onto the land, they ignore her just as the tractor salesperson did. “There’s nowhere I can go where people see me and think I belong, or where I feel safe.”

This feeling has been a primary motivator in Sim’s desire to carve out her own piece of land where she can enjoy the restorative benefits of nature that all farmers love: the joy and relief that comes from digging in the dirt, watching a tiny seed shoot out roots long before its verdant foliage begins to show.

“I work through a lot of my life issues in the garden, and I think that everyone should have the opportunity to do that… When you connect people with land, they see the mountains behind them, and they feel comfortable,” she said. It’s a feeling of ease she continues to chase and an irony many Black farmers experience: that working the land can relieve stress, while also exacerbating it. 

Community as coping

Former cattle farmer Michael Rosmann is a psychologist who has worked with farmers and institutions for more than 30 years to raise awareness about the importance of behavioral health in agricultural communities. His work with the nonprofit Agriwellness Inc., a partnership initiative between seven Prairie states facilitated by the Wisconsin Office of Rural Health, informed the framework of USDA’s Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network. 

“The traits that define successful farmers are a capacity to endure extreme hardship, the capacity to work alone, if necessary, self-reliance for making decisions, and keeping things to oneself. These traits cut across all races and cultures,” said Rosmann. 

However, these characteristics can have a downside: a reticence to divulge thoughts and emotions to behavioral health professionals or scholars who could document farmers’ individual or collective mental health needs. To combat this, Rosmann emphasizes a need for counselors and therapists who have a shared understanding of not only agriculture, but the complex racial and cultural histories these farmers hold. 

In practice, that’s not always easy. Rural communities, where most farms are, often lack the medical resources and services offered in major cities. At the same time, only about 3 percent of U.S. psychologists are Black. For farmers, these factors—the disparity in health care services and the lack of representation among health care professionals—mix with other forms of inequity to create barriers to relief from occupational stress. 

In the absence of doctors they can trust and enough rural mental health providers, many Black farmers like Abrams lean on religion to lessen their mental anguish. 

“There is still within this community of older Black farmers, deeply spiritual, deeply rooted ties to their churches. Their spiritual life is what I believe is the No. 1 thing that keeps them sane and grounded,” Kentucky State’s Bernard said. 

He speculated that faith may offset suicide risk among Black farmers. But because Black farmers are not often studied or written about outside the bounds of their racial experiences, there’s little to no information about the prevalence of suicide and self-harm among them. 

That most Black farmers turn to social networks for support bears out an aspect of Farm Bureau research: in general, farmers are far more likely to tap their friends and family for help than seek a doctor’s advice.  

Kaleb “KJ” Hill, 35, is a fourth-generation farmer from New Orleans and the founder of Oko Vue Produce Co., an agricultural business that specializes in edible landscapes and stormwater management. 

He looks inside and outside his community for assistance. 

“A lot of [farmers] are not very vocal with what they’re going through. They’ll speak in a lot of cliches, like ‘You know, it’s just part of the job.’ But the way I live my life, I share if I’m seeking additional support,” Hill said.  

Though he doesn’t presume to recommend mental health services to his peers, “we usually talk to each other,” he said. 

“That’s important,” he went on. “I won’t say it’s like traditional group therapy or anything that’s facilitated by a professional. It’s just us sitting around in a circle or gathering at the end of the season, and having a little dinner together with some of the things we have left over and just talking about how that was a rough year. It’s an ongoing conversation. You’re venting like ‘Man, that was frustrating, this insect ate up everything. What did you do about it?’ That’s a therapeutic session in itself.” 

Still, traditional talk therapy keeps him “in touch with reality and it’s helped me grow as a man. … Sometimes you have these emotions that you don’t necessarily have a word for and that professional does,” he added. 

The Provosts also sought help to alleviate their feelings of despair. Both now speak with a therapist regularly. They say it’s had a marked effect on their ability to cope with the day-to-day stress incurred by attempts to preserve their livelihood. But the fight is long from over. What was once an almost 5,000-acre family sugarcane operation—June’s family owned about 300 of those acres and rented the remainder—is now a mere 36 acres, split between June and one of his brothers. Angie’s civil rights claim remains open, and Congress’s effort at debt cancellation, which would have offered them a much-needed reprieve, remains stalled. 

Additional reporting contributed by Cynthia Greenlee.

The post Debt, racism, and fear of displacement are driving an overlooked public health crisis among Black farmers appeared first on The Counter.

But despite the heightened interest in the method, many of the new courses lack scientific rigor and can run hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars; few accredited semester-length university courses or degree programs exist. So many aquaponics growers still rely on self-teaching, learning from each other in real life, and “YouTube University” or social media platforms. 

“At the end of 2019, we surveyed just under 400 aquaponics producers, and the number one thing that people wanted was to talk to other farmers,” said Janelle Hager, aquaponics state specialist at Kentucky State University. “There is a discrepancy there because a lot of the growth in aquaponics early on started with backyard systems. So you have a lot of people on YouTube, you have a lot of people selling a lot of stuff. There’s just so much information that it’s really difficult to wade through all of that and find credible, replicated research that’s [provided] in a way that the public can understand and use it. I think [making that information more accessible] is what universities are doing in that regard right now.”

However, Fountain Heights’ effort is one of a growing number of aquaponics initiatives by Black farmers outside university programs in urban Alabama. They’re taking root through collaborative action, growing a network that’s learning from each other, and building systems that they hope can literally feed communities. Through their attempts to expand access to healthy produce and strengthen Black people’s ties to agriculture, these farmers have developed meaningful connections and shared information among like-minded urban agriculturalists and community members.

After Villanueva and Gooden connected with Davis, a self-taught aquaponics farmer and the owner of the agricultural company Sowing Seeds, via social media in 2015, the couple began assisting him with weeding and seeding on his Bessemer farm—a backyard greenhouse he built with two tanks totaling 2,400 gallons, stocked with 200 fish. Davis taught himself the method through months of diligent research, scouring the internet for how-to-videos, and trial and error. 

“We don’t have enough people of color involved in the world of agriculture. So, whenever I hear anybody of color trying to be more involved with agriculture, I feel like it’s my duty to assist,” said Davis. 

When Villanueva and Gooden began to plan for their urban farm in 2017, Davis visited Fountain Heights to evaluate their setup and suggested some tweaks. He visited again when Villanueva was pregnant with the couple’s third child and helped them put finishing touches on their greenhouse. Gooden returned the favor by helping Davis repair his greenhouse after a bout of bad weather blew the plastic off. 

Bit by bit, Davis began teaching them about aquaponics: how a system works, the benefits of certain fish, the importance of nutrients derived from their waste.  

To Gooden and Villanueva, aquaponics offers a way to grow more efficiently. That’s especially important on their small half-acre farm, which occupies a once-overgrown lot. Villanueva, a former teacher, and Gooden, a landscaper, asked the elderly property owner if they could cultivate it. They have turned it into an expanse that was aflutter with butterflies and bursting with greenery in late summer, where their children disappear into leafy vines and triumphantly pull out a Tahitian melon squash whose growth they’ve been watching.

The farm is also a source of fresh produce distributed via a sliding-scale CSA service and a food pantry where passersby can pick up free vegetables, no questions asked.  

Like many urban farmers, the pair has tried to find an innovative solution to sustain their community and combat the socioeconomic barriers that limit its potential.

“Our neighborhood is a poor neighborhood. It’s been under-resourced. It’s been divested from. But it doesn’t mean that we don’t deserve things that are beautiful, things that are maintained, things that are owned by people in the community,” said Villanueva. “I want to see kids running through flowers and picking stuff, eating fresh tomatoes or beans. We need that kind of joy. That’s what this space is.” 

They see promise in Fountain Heights, where others may only see problems. In the early to mid-20th century, the neighborhood transitioned from being a white, largely Jewish neighborhood to a desirable housing location for Birmingham’s Black middle class. That demographic change brought more social change. The area became the site of racially motivated bombings, including the well-known bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. But as many residents moved to suburbs—and an interstate highway divided the neighborhood—Fountain Heights became a community of declining homeownership, empty homes seized by local government due to unpaid taxes, and fewer businesses. Across the street from the couple’s home is a corner convenience store, and although the nearest full-service grocer is only about 1.5 miles away, the costs of goods and distance still make traveling for groceries prohibitive for elderly and low-income earning residents. 

“There’s never going to be a grocery store that comes in and says, ‘Yeah, let me build [near] a Superfund site.’ There’s never going to be a lot of economic development projects in that area. So what do we do for ourselves? Because we need to eat. … So what does it look like to farm above ground?” said Villanueva.

Farming above ground is particularly important in Birmingham because decades of steel and iron manufacturing have had a marked effect on the soil of surrounding neighborhoods. North Birmingham’s 35th Avenue Superfund site, where coking and other industries contaminated swaths of the city’s soil, sits less than 4 miles north of the neighborhood. Arsenic and lead from historic, century-old homes demolished in recent years have also posed a concern. After testing their soil for contamination, Gooden and Villanueva’s property was clear, but tests on the overgrown plot that sits kitty-corner to their farm returned high levels of arsenic. And while parts of the neighborhood don’t show signs of potentially dangerous environmental residue, reports of contamination in the general area typically don’t encourage wary developers or newcomers to locate businesses or homes there.  

In a few weeks, Fountain Heights Farm will fill one deep-water tank with tilapia. The fish will produce ammonia-rich waste that flows through a filtration system and into four beds arranged like a “floating raft” of greenhouse-grown plants such as strawberries and collard greens. Bacteria will help convert the ammonia to nitrates that the plants absorb through their roots. In this process, the plants remove excess nutrients and purify the water that’s sent back through another pipe into the fish tank, and the cycle repeats. When the tilapia grow to more than a pound in weight, Villanueva and Gooden hope to provide the neighborhood with a local fish source. 

They learned by watching Davis, who built his first system in the fall of 2015 out of curiosity. Davis made a miniature model of his aquaponics operation out of a shoe box and cardboard; collected recycled materials such as old plastic sheeting and PVC piping; and constructed his own lumber reservoir tank to keep costs down. While Auburn University, located in central Alabama, once offered an annual three-day commercial aquaponics workshop, in addition to extension services, the campus is more than two hours south of Bessemer. The workshop, last offered in 2019, cost between $1,000-$1,200. His online education was free, but building his 16-by-36 foot greenhouse and aquaponics system for tilapia and goldfish cost Davis about $6,000. Inside the greenhouse, he runs fans to moderate the temperature and LED grow lights powered by his city utility connection. 

Davis, who partners with three local elementary schools to host farm field days and in-school learning programs, says he’s ready to construct a larger greenhouse that can facilitate more efficient growing space and educational tours. K-12 school programs have offered sustained interest in aquaponics in recent years because they provide educators visual and hands-on, activity-based projects that can boost students’ interest in careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

“My whole thing is I want to get [Black people and people of color] involved in agriculture. … In my opinion, natural resources are something that city folks take for granted. Bugs are a natural resource, fish are a natural resource, the sun, plants, grass, soil. Without us turning back to farming, I think that we will never gain the economic stronghold that we need,” he said.

“Planning is extremely important because you’re trying to meet the market demand. The plants have to pay the rent. Every square foot that’s in there, you have to be generating money from or it’s a waste of space that you’re not utilizing, or you’re paying for and not getting any returns. The goal is to maximize the dollars per square foot that you can produce,” he said. 

System design is another key component to running a successful aquaponics farm. Huy Tran, vice president and owner of Aquatic Equipment and Design in central Florida, has worked in aquaculture and aquaponics for about 30 years. Although interest in the field has been growing since the 1970s, Tran said he’s observed a major spike in the past 15 years. That surge has spurred both growth and misinformation, making it all the more important to bolster self-teaching with science-based research from reputable sources like extension agents. 

An industry of sellers advertising pre-made aquaponics kits and systems have enticed many growers who want to learn but lack the skills and expertise to design and build a system from the ground up. Some run as cheap as $50 for home growers while others targeted toward commercial operators can exceed $50,000. But it’s often hard for people new to aquaponics to judge what system is right for them. 

“As a consultant, I spend more time correcting already existing facilities versus developing new facilities. Twenty percent of my time is starting from scratch and I’m developing it with them; 80 percent is bought-off-the-shelf units that we’re spending time repairing—and that’s already a negative. They’ve spent money, it’s not working, and now they’re spending more money to repair it,” said Tran. 

Growers must also grasp both aquaculture and agriculture, essentially managing two types of cultivation at once. Despite these hurdles, some urban farmers believe the effort is worth the possibility of community improvement and economic impact. 

Yemi Amu is the founder and director of Oko Urban Farms in Brooklyn, New York. The Nigeria native has been working with aquaponics for a decade, setting up her first farm—and New York City’s first outdoor aquatic farm—in an abandoned lot through a municipal program in 2013. She expanded to a second independently acquired site this year, featuring three deep-water beds with plants floating on top in a raft system. In another section, she grows herbs and root crops in soilless mediums—things like sand, Perlite, peat moss, and coconut husks—irrigated by four 700-gallon tanks filled with carp, goldfish, and koi. 

Amu plants common vegetables—onions, tomatoes, sweet potatoes—and vegetables that feature prominently in immigrant cultures and cuisines, such as Scotch bonnet peppers, lemongrass, and okra. She also added plants that inspire people to think of agriculture beyond food, like indigo for plant dyes.  

“Aquaponics gives me an opportunity to center water in conversations about food. It’s an opportunity to talk about places around the world suffering from drought, connections between the marine world and us. How much water do we use for agriculture, for fashion? What does it look like to feed people when there is no water left?” said Amu. 

Her motivation to start farming sprang from a former job as a chef and nutrition educator for a New York nonprofit that provided people with permanent housing. The group hired Amu to cook healthy meals for residents five days a week and to teach them about nutrition. As part of her work, she often took groups to farmers markets and grocery stores, but found that while residents followed healthier eating practices when she was present, those behaviors would lapse when she was absent. Frustrated, she and her coworkers decided to start a garden on the roof of their building in 2009 so that residents could get hands-on and see for themselves the benefit of growing healthy food. 

Two years later, while working in the rooftop garden, a community volunteer introduced her to aquaponics. It was a concept Amu was familiar with, but didn’t know by name. 

“When I was in Nigeria, my neighbor raised catfish in her backyard but couldn’t keep the business going because of the amount of water it required and the cost. So the idea that you could farm fish in a way where you’re not only saving water, you’re saving money, for people who pay for water, and you can not only raise your own fish but also have vegetables that you can also raise and sell, to me, was like—Why wouldn’t anyone do this?” she said. 

Her interest took her across the country in 2011—to Florida, Minnesota, and Wisconsin—in search of experienced aquaponics farmers from whom she could learn. Relying on relationships with educational institutions like New York University’s Animal Behavioral Studies program, as well as experienced farmers, has helped to sustain her operations. 

“I have a farmer upstate in Westchester that I call all the time. He does not, for the life of him, understand what I’m doing here. He’s like, ‘You have fish—in Brooklyn?’ But I pester him with questions when I don’t know what’s going on with my fish. Establishing a relationship with someone who has more knowledge and experience when it comes to fish is important,” she said. 

While aquaponics garners much attention for its uniqueness, Amu said it shouldn’t be romanticized or mistaken for ease. The rewards and challenges go hand in hand. People stop her on the street to tell her they used herbs she’s grown to make traditional medicine. When her fish are ill, she must painstakingly attempt to identify what the cause is and how to fix it. Ultimately, she believes aquaponics goes beyond simply feeding people; it has implications for building a more sustainable world. 

“I very much believe in urban farming not as a means to feed people but as a means to create awareness and policy around how to create a better food system, and how to create a more climate-friendly world,” said Amu. “We’re creating and maintaining ecosystems in an environment that’s surrounded by concrete. That aspect of it is rewarding because people get to see this, and urban planners come and politicians come. I’m hoping that this changes what our city looks like and what cities look like around the world.”

A little more than an hour away from Villanueva and Gooden’s Birmingham farm, Darryl Parker and his brothers in an graduate chapter of Omega Psi Phi fraternity view aquaponics as a way to provide healthy, affordable food for their neighbors. The fraternity owns close to 2 acres of land on a portion of South Court Street. There, shuttered businesses and boarded-up homes sit minutes away from Old Cloverdale, one of Montgomery’s most affluent neighborhoods. Corner convenience and discount stores located in the predominantly Black neighborhood sell low-cost groceries and canned goods, so the fraternity plans to establish two greenhouses utilizing aquaponics to supply the neighborhood with fresh produce and a local source of protein. 

“Is this going to be some large commercial operation? No. It’s going to be very small-scale. But even that can make a dent in the local community, that the folks can walk to a place where they can get greens and fish,” said Parker, who works as the Montgomery County election director. 

Through philanthropic work in the city, the Ques (members of Omega Psi Phi) have developed a trusted reputation for community service. At one Thanksgiving turkey drive, Parker surveyed a group of mothers, asking if they would shop at a neighborhood grocery if they could get produce at heavily discounted prices. They indicated overwhelming support. For Parker—whose grandparents farmed in Greene County, and who grew up backyard gardening in Chicago—it was important that the fraternity do something with a lasting impact, unlike the faded signs of the empty strip mall that faces the fraternity’s property. 

Parker began researching aquaponics some years ago as a hobby interest. Much like Davis, he was struck by the novel nature of the method and convinced his 75 fraternity brothers in Montgomery’s chapter to get behind the idea of building an aquaponics setup. After visiting with Auburn’s extension agents, Parker said the group is putting together final plans to efficiently utilize their land and erect two greenhouses—the first in late winter 2022 and the second in late summer or early fall. 

The group plans to fund the operation through grants, though the fraternity chapter has long-term aspirations of establishing a local full-service grocer in the area. 

“What I foresee for us is showing our fraternity members across the world this is something we can spearhead that’s sustainable,” said Parker. “Ain’t no reason that people should be starving in this country when we can do something about it. We have the requisite education, the knowledge, and the resources,” said Parker. “We’ve gotta do something more entrenched, more intrinsic, and long-term. This has got to be something generational.”

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“We would like for the judge to hear directly from our member farmers how much the delayed implementation of Section 1005 is impacting them. I don’t think that’s something that is realized in a real way. This will cause farm and land loss for many of the farmers as well as the declarants involved in our motion to intervene,” said Briar Blakley, a spokesperson for the Federation.

It’s a rare move for the advocacy group. If its motion is granted, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives would become an equal party to the suit, making them co-defendants in the case. This means they would be able to participate in discovery, securing evidence and verbal or written statements from witnesses to present in court. 

“The decisions that [USDA] made not to appeal were strategic,” said Dãnia Davy, director of land retention and advocacy at the Federation. “Our situation, being an association of cooperatives and having a membership that’s predominantly Black farmers, gives us the opportunity to have a lot more access to a lot more evidence through our members’ experiences than [USDA] would be privy to, necessarily. We thought that our evidence would strengthen their ability to defend.”

The six farmers named in the motion are only a handful of the group’s many members who are eligible for loan forgiveness under Section 1005, some who carry substantial debt and have built their future farm plans—making arrangements for equipment, seeds, livestock, and fertilizer—in anticipation of impending debt relief. 

Batten, a member of the Federation but not one of the six declarants, has been unable to farm at his usual scale for the past two years due to outstanding debt with a USDA-guaranteed lender. Those arrears pushed him to the brink of foreclosure, forcing him to file bankruptcy to prevent bank seizure of 201 acres of his land. While he would typically farm up to 800 acres a year of peanuts, cotton, corn, wheat, and soybeans on a combination of owned and rented land, this year he is farming just 37 acres of soybeans. He rents those acres from a local farmer, while renting out his own land to others so he can pay down his debt. 

Batten said that because his direct loan funds from FSA, which were needed at the start of planting season in January, typically arrived late—in April, May, or sometimes June—he was forced to seek guaranteed loan funding at a higher interest rate from an outside lender. In his case, it was the Bank of Dawson, a small local lender in Dawson, Georgia, about 25 miles from his farm. 

“There were many times where the banker would be very pessimistic. … A particular banker I was working with told me several times that I’d never be able to buy land,” said Batten. 

He was wrong. But not long after he secured his farm in 2015, Batten said, he began experiencing problems with the bank. 

“Once I purchased the land, after that I never got a [guaranteed] loan in January, February, or March. My loans were always after that. In April, May or June,” he said. This, again, delayed his ability to plant his crops on time and jeopardized his ability to run a successful farm operation. 

Eventually, Batten fell behind on his loan payments to the Bank of Dawson, and sought financial help from his father, who attempted to pay off his outstanding balance. Batten said the bank agent refused the payment but gave no explanation, saying only that the company no longer wanted to do business with him. The bank then accelerated his 25-year term loan, demanding full payment or forfeiture of his land. 

The Federation and its lawyers argue that the interests of members like Batten differ greatly from those of Secretary Vilsack and USDA. 

“What’s missing in the narrative about this is the actual discrimination against Black farmers that led us to this point in the first place,” said Winston & Strawn attorney Kobi Brinson, a partner in one of several firms representing the Federation in its attempt to intervene. “The discrimination against Black farmers is so pervasive, so deep, and has caused such a negative financial impact that it is virtually impossible for the USDA to tell that story itself because it’s a part of that same system.”

Some legal experts contend that USDA faces a slim chance of advancing the current debt relief program as it stands without jeopardizing other government programs that seek to remedy past discrimination. The current makeup of the Supreme Court, should the case go so far, does not seem favorable to a win and could put in question the constitutionality of adjacent policies such as affirmative action. 

“I don’t think any of us are delusional about the uphill battle that this poses, but it’s important to make sure these farmers’ stories aren’t lost in the discussions. These are real people we’re talking about, and these are real consequences,” said Brinson. 

The lawsuit filed on April 26 is currently pending in the Northern District of Texas. Under that jurisdiction, any party opposed to a motion may file a written response in 21 days. Lawyers for the Federation would then have 14 days to file a reply. As it stands, any opposed party must file a response to the Federation’s October 12 motion to intervene by November 2, giving the Federation until November 16 to respond. After that, the court could rule at any time. It could also order oral arguments before issuing its ruling, said Winston & Strawn attorney Chase Cooper. He estimates that U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor may issue a ruling on the motion in late November or early December. 

With USDA’s hands tied on administering the program, Democrats in Congress are attempting to amend ERFCA, replacing it with an $11 billion program that would provide debt cancellation to “at risk” and “economically distressed” farmers, as revealed in a document leaked earlier this month by the House’s Agriculture Committee Republicans. Broadening the bill’s language would mean that the new designations would also apply to white farmers who have not suffered the same longstanding discrimination. 

While USDA said it was working with DOJ to “vigorously defend” Section 1005, the department said the new text could position the department to reach more underserved debt-holders. 

“The language on debt relief in the reconciliation bill offers improvements to the original text of the American Rescue Plan Section 1005. These new provisions will provide more robust tools that allow USDA to deliver advanced resources to underserved borrowers. With the passage of this reconciliation bill, USDA will be positioned to serve a broader segment of our most vulnerable borrowers,” said USDA press secretary Kate Waters. 

Should the reconciliation bill pass, it could supersede the measure passed in March, leaving it up to the Miller v. Vilsack plaintiffs and the court to decide whether to drop the suit or determine it moot. But that also raises concerns. Namely, the measure’s language does not currently apply to USDA guaranteed loan debt held by third-party lenders like the Bank of Dawson where Batten owes six figures. In other words: It’s unclear who would be eligible for debt relief.

“We are definitely concerned about farmers and ranchers of color who may or may not be included depending on the criteria for receiving the debt relief under the current reconciliation bill, as well as the fact that guaranteed loans have not been considered or included whatsoever. Only direct loans from the FSA are even under consideration for debt relief under reconciliation, whereas under Section 1005, both direct and guaranteed loans were eligible for debt relief,” said Davy. 

The post After a last-ditch lawsuit is filed in Texas, Black farmers wait to learn the fate of USDA’s imperiled debt relief program appeared first on The Counter.

Hemp plants, which can grow up to 6 feet tall at harvest, require almost-daily care. Few herbicides or pesticides have been approved for use on the plant, so weed and pest control require close attention. While there are specially designed machines to harvest hemp, many small farmers cut the dense stalks by hand to avoid added equipment costs. 

Since his first year planting hemp, Brown’s increased his operation to 165 acres. The hemp harvested from Brown’s cannabis plants are sold for fiber, grain, flower, and oil, which the farm processes and uses to make CBD products like tinctures, salves, and teas sold online and in a Warrenton, North Carolina, retail store under the name Hempfinity. He sells the bulk of his crop, though, to V. F. Corporation, owner of outdoor apparel company The North Face and other retail brands. 

Brown, who works an off-farm job as a federal police officer, reorganized the farm to prepare for hemp production. He implemented new crop rotations and planted organic vegetables and medicinal herbs such as lavender, eucalyptus, and basil—crops he felt had monetary and regenerative value. Setting up the farm for transition cost him about $150,000 spent on equipment—harvesters, a new closed cab tractor for all weather conditions—and interior structures such as the farm’s three greenhouses and a temperature-controlled storage facility. 

Although 2018’s Farm Bill legalized industrial hemp, cannabis containing more than .3 percent of THC remains a federally controlled substance. Hemp producers run the added risk of cannabis plants running “hot”—a phenomenon that occurs when a plant’s THC content exceeds the federal compliance level, putting the producer at risk of losing a significant portion, if not all of their crop. 

This means that farmers must pay to lab-test their crops early and often to determine THC levels, as all growers must receive a state-approved COA before they can be harvested and sold. This factor has made private banks and lenders leery of financing hemp operations, and the USDA has only this year issued guidance to its Farm Service Agency about processing loans for industrial hemp. So practically speaking, growers looking to get into the game early had to have cash in hand and be able to weather even more uncertainty.  

Despite ongoing efforts to make USDA policy and practices more equitable, just last year, the agency rejected loans to Black farmers at three times the rate of white farmers, according to its own data. It approved only 37 percent of Black loan applicants for a USDA program to help farmers finance land, equipment, and repairs in 2020, yet granted loans to 71 percent of white farmers, according to a Politico analysis of the agency’s figures.

Mia Darden, 55, and Roy Pope, 41, self-financed their two-year-old hemp operation, Kind Origin Pharms, in Toney, Alabama, by using their off-farm incomes and dipping into their retirement plans. This year, they received some funding from one small investor. 

The two friends met while working for the U.S. Department of Defense (both are still employed by the agency) and followed hemp and medical marijuana legalization in different states, hoping that Alabama would eventually do the same. In 2016, the state established a program that allowed industrial hemp to be grown for research and pilot studies. Then, in October 2019, it began accepting applications from producers looking to farm the crop as an agricultural commodity. 

Darden and Pope like hemp’s versatility; according to a Congressional Research Service paper, more than 25,000 end products can be developed from the plant. They’d also heard it celebrated as a crop that can yield substantial profit with little acreage. That’s a boon to Black farmers, who cultivate less than 150 acres on average.

Like Brown, Pope was able to take advantage of access to family land. He carved out about an acre and a half of his parents’ 17 acres for the industrial hemp operation. But, unlike Brown, Darden and Pope had no real experience farming full-time: no equipment on hand, no established history of farm production to access lines of credit; and no long-standing connections with knowledgeable farmers who might enlighten them along the way. 

They learned as they grew. They first considered growing fiber but recognized that it was better suited for farmers with more land. Then they mulled over CBD oil. 

“We realized that if we’re going to grow to manufacture oil, then we’ve got to have oil-processing capability. And we didn’t know many people around here who were doing that. We never found a really solid, established oil processor here,” said Pope. 

Even when the partners reached out to processors recommended to them by the state agricultural department or other growers, those processors were also just starting out. Darden and Pope settled on CBD flower—which only needed to be dried and cured—a product already familiar to many consumers and one they believed could command a high value. 

Most Black producers lack on-site processing and storage facilities, which amounts to added costs, following the necessities like equipment, fertilizer, and seeds or plant clones. The nearest processor may not even be in the same state, and farmers can wait months for a processing appointment while prices change. 

After harvest, the cannabis plant must be hung to dry in a temperature-controlled environment. Once the flowers are trimmed, they can be stored for up to two years, which a grower might choose to do if, for example, the demand or price for hemp wanes, or their full crop isn’t purchased. In some states like Florida, freezing a crop is considered processing and requires a fee-based permit. 

As regulations vary from state-to-state, in Alabama, hemp producers must pay $1,000 annually for each growing, processing, or handling site. That includes a greenhouse or indoor structure. For Pope and Darden, that was an unanticipated cost they only learned of when attending a local cannabis agriculture meeting. They hope to add a greenhouse on-site to increase quality control, but in the meantime, they rent a Conex shipping container where they store and dry their plants after harvest.

The nascent character of the hemp industry meant Pope and Darden often felt as if the state’s agriculture department was like them, learning as the program progressed. That’s a sentiment echoed by Moses, the N.C. A&T farm superintendent. Because farmers and universities in North Carolina were granted the opportunity to farm hemp simultaneously, Moses believes that created a significant knowledge gap. 

“Universities should have been given funding to study hemp for a five-year period and develop programs and projects, so that they could truly evaluate hemp and be able to pass on qualified information to farmers so that they’d be able to know what the best practices are; what you can expect; how much fertilizer you need; what’s the best environment; how much you’re really going to make. Those things were discovered along the way,” he said.  

Across the industry, that’s left room for dubious actors to take advantage of newcomers. 

“Overall, everyone has said to me that market contracts are bogus,” said 38-year-old Rougemont, North Carolina farmer Amber Burgin-Brothers.

Burgin-Brothers formed her nonprofit farm, Elijah’s Educational Promise, in the fall of 2019 with the aim of securing a hemp grower’s license and planting her first crop in the new year. However, she soon learned the state required all applicants have one full year as a “bonafide farmer” under their belt before approval. 

Frustrated, but undeterred, she decided to dig in, literally transitioning from the gardening she’d known and loved all her life, to full-fledged farming. She found a 10-acre property with a house outside of Durham and moved there. Burgin-Brothers worked three jobs to fund her farm enterprise and even started a GoFundMe to crowdsource donations. 

The pandemic delayed her plan to reapply for a hemp license in 2020, but it gave her ample time to connect with established hemp farmers, research, and identify some of the industry’s shortcomings, among them limiting contracts. Agricultural advocates like Moses recommend all farmers enlist the aid of a lawyer to review purchasing contracts, as the dollar amount may be attractive, while its terms are not. 

Burgin-Brothers is wary of buyers who “expect you to sign a contract with a company who’s going to potentially purchase your hemp. And in that potential purchase risk, you also sign away the right to sell it outside of that contract. So you grow this hemp and you’re also responsible for the curing of this hemp. Then when they come to see the hemp, they might say, ‘Well, this is not up to standard. You didn’t properly cure this, and we’re not going to buy it’ or that they’ll only pay a lower price. You may have signed the original contract for $100,000. Then when you finish, you get $30,000.” 

There are even more horror stories: brokers never showing up to collect the agreed-upon product or slowing payments in hopes that the market price will tumble. 

Florida cannabis, agricultural, and dietary supplement attorney Scheril Murray Powell has seen all these issues play out in an industry that one advocate has called “a wild new frontier for American farmers.” Hemp’s potentially high value and intensive cultivation process—including the costs of installing irrigation and the time required to properly tend it—magnify the issue of predatory contracts in an industry that’s not backed by government subsidies. 

The USDA’s Risk Management Agency began offering multi-peril crop insurance coverage—policies that cover loss of crop yields from natural causes such as drought, freezes, and disease—for hemp grown for fiber, grain, or CBD oil through a pilot program covering select counties in 21 states in late 2019. This year, the agency added counties in four more. However, that insurance doesn’t cover fraud from unscrupulous brokers.  

“What I would like to see in the future is for the USDA to include hemp under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. So that we know that people who are intending to be brokers have been vetted by the USDA. If they’re not being honest, if they’re not showing up for their crops, then there’s going to be some sanction or some type of remedy that needs to take place,” said Murray Powell. 

The federal law enacted in 1930 established regulations and mechanisms to ensure that fruit and vegetable producers and buyers engage in fair trade business practices. It provides automatic terms that both parties must abide by, as well as procedures for either to file complaints and mediate disputes. 

Beyond the absence of a federal protection mechanism, Murray Powell said some legislative policies also adversely affect Black and small farmers’ ability to capitalize on hemp. Some states may require growers acquire a surety bond that guarantees monetary payment should they fail to fulfill a contract, an obvious economic hurdle for Black farmers who often possess less capital and assets than white farmers. 

Permit pricing for processing is another issue, said Murray Powell. 

“Even if you have a low-cost growing license, but the processing license is high, then you make the farmer dependent on the processor to pick them, especially in jurisdictions without cottage industry law.” 

In some states, hemp is excluded from cottage industry laws that enable entrepreneurs, including small farmers, to sell value-added products and foods from their homes or local farmers’ markets if their annual revenue falls below a certain threshold.  

“Whereas with another commodity, you can make a salve, you can make a tincture, you can make a product … and if they’re growing those crops in small quantities, it doesn’t rot. … With hemp, you can grow for a whole season and then if you don’t have a purchaser who has a processor license, or if you can’t afford a processor license and the processing equipment, there’s nothing for you to do except sell your hemp for pennies on the dollar,” she said. 

Black hemp farmers and advocates like Moses believe the reward could outweigh the risks, if there were better access to federal grants, other funding, and technical support, along with industry reform to mitigate risks. But those are big ifs, dependent on policy and cultural shifts at institutions such as the USDA, which has a long history of bias against Black farmers. 

“The government has to step in and address these disparities,” said Moses of N.C. A&T. “We need to make available loans, grants—try to level the playing field. Give them an opportunity to buy machinery, to buy plants. … The systemic discrimination against the Black farmer has to stop.”

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I don’t have a salary. If I don’t work, I don’t make money. There was this stress of: What do we do now? 

I never get to sleep. So [the first month of lockdown], I just slept. But after that first month … I don’t like to have idle time. So I dove deep into yoga, astrology, and meditation. Meditation was great for my busy mind. 

I stayed in Brooklyn the whole shutdown, and it was rough, for sure. I envy everyone that left. New York is wonderful. But I describe New York like that toxic ex you can’t quit. You have a great time at night and then they give you this really intense romance, but they don’t call you for 10 days. Just long enough where you say, ‘I’m over this person.’ Then, New York calls you like, ‘Hey, how you been? Sorry, I’ve been busy.’ And you fall back in love again. When you take away the constant busyness and creative aspect of New York, it’s not fun. 

June [of 2020] hit, and Diamond Reef reopened at 25 percent indoor capacity and outdoor seating with tables spaced 6 feet apart. But in November, we closed for the winter because it was very cold. In February, my boss hit us up on WhatsApp asking us to do a Zoom meeting on the 5th. That’s when we got hit with the news that our block was bought by a real estate company and our lease had been bought out. Diamond Reef was gone. 

I totally fell into depression. My whole identity when I moved here was to work at this place. That was me, José in New York WAS Diamond Reef. 

The fact that it shut down, it just made me think more about myself and what I was doing here. It made me think about my purpose. 

Before Covid, I went to Oaxaca a lot, where they produce mezcal. One day, some people asked if I wanted to help them make it. That was the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life. The agave, they call it piña, you use the root. But you also have to replant it once you dig it up.

Each mezcalero has their own expression of what they do. Some put a cross on top of the pile that’s getting cooked, or some take some of the mezcal they made before and pour it on top—a little bit for the Devil so he doesn’t ruin the batch. Seeing [the production process] and being a part of it was the most spiritual awakening I’ve ever had. 

Most spirits are that way. You’re buying rum, but think about what they do for that sugar cane, how they harvest it, and what they do to make it. All that provides for their families. With mezcal, for example, they use the leaves to make brooms, they use it to make roofs, the leftover pulp from the mezcal they use that to make bricks and to build houses. 

It’s a connection with the Earth and Mother Nature. It’s like saying thank you so much for giving this to us. And we’re going to use every bit of it and give back to you—we took one plant, we’re going to plant three. 

It gives me chills thinking about going through it again: how much heart and soul and love goes into making spirits. 

And all this stuff was and is made by people of color. That for me, that’s everything. I was having a hard time, wondering why I’m still in this industry. Even though I’m just making a drink, it’s an experience. And I want to make sure you feel good. 

After my experience during the pandemic, I feel more in [the] driver’s seat. I know exactly how I want to move, who I am, and how I want to present myself in this industry and in my everyday life. I’ve been very honest with every person who I’ve interviewed with. I’m not playing any of this, ‘The customer is always right.’ Through exhaustion and desperation, Covid gave me the confidence and the tenacity I needed to move forward.

I learned that I don’t want to work for white people anymore. That I have to interact with my bosses before I take on a job to understand their energy, to make sure it’s beneficial for me and also the staff. 

The service industry has this kind of manipulative, toxic trait. Are you loyal? Are you ‘Team whatever this bar’s name is’? And if you are, what will you do for it? Fuck that. Why am I loyal to someone who just sees me as a number so they can hit theirs? I’m the one who’s living off nothing and then going to work in this stressful environment where some of the owners don’t think about what I’m going through as a person. I’m treading water, and I’m tired. That’s what it was like working during Covid.

The code-switching I used to do for customers, I’m done. You’re going to get who I am, and if you violate and you say something out of pocket, racist, or misogynist, transphobic—you’re fucking done. I’m not playing this game anymore. You’re gone. Don’t come back. We don’t need your money. We don’t want your energy. Covid gave me that. I’m moving intentionally. I’ll only work with people I trust.

During Covid, I walked around my neighborhood a lot, and there was this new spot, For All Things Good. It’s a molino. They ship the corn in from Mexico and make their tortillas from scratch. I smelled it one day. It smelled like my grandma’s house. I walked in and started speaking Spanish with the people, and we became friends. When they got their liquor license, they asked me to work for them.  

I work about five to six days a week depending on the week, between the café and a neighborhood joint in Crown Heights called the Branch Office. It’s an oldhead bar. I love it. All these oldheads come through, they want their shot of Jack or Henny, talk about their day. That spot is fun, and it’s good to have a balance of both. 

When Covid restrictions were lifted and people started feeling more comfortable, me and my homie would meet somewhere outside, get a bottle and some cigars. A lot of my friends who aren’t white told me that they didn’t know much about spirits and felt like it was kind of pretentious to ask questions. Also, the people who would usually sell them the spirits are white, and they don’t feel comfortable to talk with them about it. I understood that. 

So what I’ve been doing now is getting a few friends together, we get some cigars that I think will pair well with the spirit and chop it up. I explain the process of how it’s made. From there, we just keep drinking and smoking cigars. We play a card game or some dominoes. I’m a very good enabler. I’m really good at encouraging people to have another one or try something unfamiliar. 

I don’t do it for money. I love my people. Let’s get together and talk about how we’re feeling in this world right now. Let’s share this. 

This piece was edited for length.

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