The White House announced on Wednesday that tens of thousands of farmers, as well as many people who would’ve been farmers but for discrimination endured from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will soon be receiving payments from a $2 billion tranche of financial assistance authorized by federal law.
$2 billion goes to farmers who faced discrimination
Dozens of Minnesota farmers, including those who wanted to go into farming but faced unlawful hurdles from USDA, will receive checks from the federal government.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
July 31, 2024 at 10:16PM
Among the 43,000 individuals receiving payments are some 46 Minnesotans, including 33 farmers and 13 people who had planned on becoming farmers but whose encounter with discrimination prevented them from entering the field. In total, Minnesotans will receive $3.8 million. The state with the largest number of impacted farmers is Mississippi with over 13,000 recipients.
The funds stem from USDA’s Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive federal climate and sustainability legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in 2022.
The funds will be disbursed to applicants after two rounds of vetting from a third-party. The payment to farmers will average over $80,000.
“Typically, [discrimination] had to do with folks applying for an FSA loan. Sometimes they were denied that loan or given a higher interest rate,” USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small told the Star Tribune on Wednesday. Torres Small also acknowledged the broad range of applicants for farm lending programs who faced discrimination. “It really did run the gamut.”
A previous federal program to repay farmers, many Black and people of color, who faced discrimination in accessing loan programs from the nation’s top farm agency was blocked by a federal judge in Florida in 2021 over what the judge called “rigid, categorical, race-based” formula for eligibility. That program aimed to fund so-called “socially disadvantaged farmers,” defined under federal law as Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander producers.
The new program offers a wider aperture for eligibility, including farmers who may have faced discrimination from the federal government for not only racial status, but also on the basis of religion, sex, age, disability and other statuses.
Earlier this year, a white farmer from northern Minnesota sued the state agricultural agency over an aid program that sought to deliver funds to “emerging farmers,” primarily members of the BIPOC community. After the state legislature amended the program to prioritize additional traits in a farmer’s biography, including farmers earning less than $100,000 in gross income, as well as growers of specialty crops, the lawsuit was dropped.
The suits accuse the state of “arbitrarily” rejecting applications for preapproval for a cannabis business license.
