Minnesota farmer needs a truck with a cooler; Congress' farm bill could help

OGILVIE, MINN. — A daughter of a Kenyan farmer surveys her small field, still wet from late April rains.

Jane Windsperger has yet to plant her vegetables for the season on her 3.8-acre farm, set among pines in rural Kanabec County, halfway between Duluth and Minneapolis. She starts ticking off her needs.

A truck with a cooler. A hoop house. Maybe a fence to keep away the nibbling deer and woodchucks.

As debate picks up over the federal farm bill — the massive, twice-a-decade federal checkbook for the nation's agriculture producers — Windsperger is looking for more support.

"If [this bill] doesn't help us," she said, "then it'll be meaningless."

Windsperger is part of a growing chorus of small and emerging farmers — particularly producers of color — hoping Congress can better address their specialized needs in passing the next farm bill. The current one expires in September.

While the bill — expected to top $1.4 trillion — largely funds nutrition programs, it also underwrites crop insurance and conservation programs, often providing economic support for the nation's largest farmers through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Advocates say the legislation could be the extra nudge to help a Hmong farmer finance the tractor for her Dakota County field or help a northern Minnesota tribal nation secure fencing for a bison corral.

Weeks ago, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith held a roundtable with farmers from underrepresented groups at the Good Acre, a food hub, in Falcon Heights. Hmong, Black, Native and Latino farmers gathered around the table to share concerns, including tribal sovereignty or working with local Farm Service Agency officers.

"We talk a lot of romantic things about farming, but it's really a lot of hard work," said Angela Dawson, a Black hemp farmer from Pine County.

Not many people of color give farming a go in Minnesota. The last agriculture census found over 99% of the state's farmers were white.

The 1930 Census showed nearly 900,000 Black farmers in the United States, said Jacob Friefeld, a historian with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield, Ill., and co-author of a forthcoming book on Black homesteaders. Over the ensuing decades, that number would tumble.

Mechanization in farm practices winnowed farmers' ranks across racial categories, Friefeld said. In response, the USDA attempted to support struggling farmers with crop insurance and loans for equipment. But, due to a funding system dependent on the whims of local, often white boards, such credit wasn't frequently extended credit to Black farmers.

"Even when they would get a loan," Friefeld said, "Black farmers were getting less money than their white counterparts on the land."

By 2017, there were only 45,000 Black U.S. farmers.

In the late 1990s, a group of 400 Black farmers — called "Pigford," for plaintiff Timothy Pigford, a North Carolina farmer — filed a class-action lawsuit against the USDA, arguing that local offices delayed or denied payments to Black farmers while white farmers received them.

The massive federal agency has sought to rectify those and other past wrongs. The 2018 farm bill opened a new USDA program, spending $435 million on a new office to train and aid farmers and ranchers who were socially disadvantaged or veterans.

In 2021, Congress and the Biden administration made a $5 billion appropriation targeted for farmers of color. After court challenges, the USDA widened the eligibility rules to include all "distressed" farmers.

Often enough, however, farm funding remains like a photo of vegetables on a truck passing down the highway — attractive, but unattainable.

"They give us grants," Windsperger said. "But we're not eligible for them."

Windsperger understands the hardship of farming. She grew up on a farm in Kenya. Her father had milk cows and grew vegetables. After a career as a nurse, she wanted to return to farm life. So she found a patch of land listed online for just under $12,000. It had clay soil and enough room to plant her cabbage, onions and tomatoes.

When Windsperger first visited the farm site, a man in a pick-up started following her.

"He had two flags — the USA and the other one [Confederate battle flag]," Windsperger said.

At the gravel road, she turned off and got out of the car. Her female friends riding with her begged her not to do it. But she was done being tailed.

"What do you want?" the man hollered. Windsperger told him she was looking at land.

"I want to farm!"

The man then left in his vehicle.

Farmers know success relies on moxie, know-how and maybe a little luck. Windsperger has relied on local nonprofits in finding buyers for her produce. A bill in the Legislature would widen tax credits for socially disadvantaged farmers. But the federal reauthorization is the lodestar.

Changing the farm bill is nearly impossible, acknowledges David Van Eeckhout, farm program director with the Good Acre.

"It's like carving a marble statue," Van Eeckhout said. "You have to chip off a little bit here and a little bit there."

But, occasionally, the bill can make lasting changes. A newer USDA program helps small producers buy high tunnels — or hoop barns — that act like a small greenhouse or shelter for produce.

Supporters say they want more targeted attention in a bill that has historically undergirded conventional agriculture.

What Windsperger really wants is a grant to help her finance that truck. It might cost her $70,000. With a cooler atop it she could plug into the house to keep her harvest fresh and reach markets in the Twin Cities.

"I call myself an emerging farmer," Windsperger said. "Right now, though? I'm really struggling."

She waits for the rains to pass, sipping her green tea. She has a "lake" — or pool of rain water — on her property. She tells her visitors to return in the summer.

"I want to plant," she said. "I have contracts."

And, finally, she has her farm.