An Examination of Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Program on Black Farmers in the United States

Jae-Young Ko

Department of Public Policy and Administration, College of Liberal Arts, Jackson State University, 101 W. Capitol St., Jackson, MS 39201, USA.

Authors’ Contact Details: E-mail Address ✉: jae-young.ko@jsums.edu; Phone Number ☎: Tel: 601-979-8781

Accepted May 06, 2021

Black farmers have been providing significant contributions to the agricultural sector in the United States. However, the number of Black farmers has been decreasing since the 1920s. Traditionally Black farmers have operated small-scale farms due to their relatively challenging financial and technical resources, compared to giant corporate farms, which have had advantages over small farms in producing and selling their products. Black-owned small farms had been marginalized. After the settlement of Pigford v. Glickman in 1999, the USDA has been providing loans to the black and other minority farmers under the special loan program (Socially Disadvantaged Farmers) to mitigate decreasing black farmers. This paper examined the impacts of the USDA loan program on Black farmers using the USDA data for 2002-2012 whether the loan program effectively has mitigated or rebounded the declining trend of Black farmers. The results showed that the number of black farmers has stabilized and rebounded slowly nationwide with the loan program, due to the increased government payment to the farmers and increasingly positive economic returns from their agricultural products. Rather than remaining at providing loans to farmers on the production side only, a new holistic approach encompassing production, processing, and marketing, and training systematically is needed for the enhanced completive edge of Black farmers. A Senate bill proposed in 2021 is a federal effort for that direction.

Key words: black farmers, minority farming, USDA loan.

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