Study Finds Black Farmers Have Lost $326 Billion in Land
And that’s likely a conservative estimate.
Study Finds Black Farmers Have Lost $326 Billion in Land
And that’s likely a conservative estimate.
As Black farmers, activists and even some in the government work to make changes and reparations for the farmland lost by Black farmers during the 20th century, one number is often tossed around: 90 percent. That’s how much of the Black-owned farmland in the United States was lost during the 20th century.
But there are many other numbers involved here. A new study, led by Dania Francis of the University of Massachusetts Boston, analyzed USDA data to attempt to figure out the monetary value lost as a result of, largely, racist institutions and weird legal obstacles.
Francis looked into USDA census data ranging from 1922 to 1997, aiming to find, according to Reuters, the present-day value of all the acreage of land that was lost. The figure she arrived at is $326 billion, but even that, Francis acknowledges, is a very conservative estimate of even merely the monetary damage done to these Black farmers.
In an article for the New Republic, Francis and co-authors note that the value of the lost farmland doesn’t account for the fact that farmland is, as Bill Gates well knows, an incredibly good investment. “Developers have turned some of this land, like in Hilton Head, South Carolina, into incredibly expensive residential and commercial properties,” they write.
The current USDA, run by Tom Vilsack, has at least acknowledged the USDA’s centuries-long history of discrimination against Black farmers, although attempts to actually right the wrongs of the past have not been especially successful, with payments stalled owing to lawsuits from right-wing groups.
Follow us
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
May 7, 2022
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
SubmitNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.
This is not enough information. White farmers have sued the Biden administration and stopped a program to help Black farmers who are often closed out of land, markets, equipment loans and other essentials. There are organizations attempting to equip Black farmers, quite a few. As well as Black farm leaders. I have searched for ways to resource talented farmers who find themselves closed out. There are some solid, innovative things happening and they are far from enough to address the need and this tiring tendril of injustice.
The Black American Farmers Won’t Back Down for Our Legacy Justice and Heritage.
You need to show all the statistics of all farmers who have lost land in this time period to prove racism was the cause.