The NPR Politics Podcast - How Department of Agriculture Is Reckoning With Racial Inequity

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Black farmers have long struggled with discrimination, inequities that persist today despite federal efforts to address them. Now, the USDA is out with a new equity report with a number of recommendations.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Ximena Bustillo, and congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales.This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Chase Karacostas in Austin, Texas, where I'm about to finish my first week working for KUT, the local NPR affiliate. I am so excited to be here and to be back in Austin where I went to college and where I just fell in love with this city. And I'm also so excited to be involved with NPR. This podcast was recorded at... That is a great station. and welcome to Public Radio World. It's 110 Eastern on Tuesday, March 7th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be loving every minute of being here

and every minute of being involved in public radio, where, just to record this, I unplugged my fridge because it was making too much noise. Yeah. Nice. Enjoy the show. He knows what's up. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Ximena Bustillo, and I cover politics. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And a big Biden administration goal going into office was to address historic inequities in federal agencies. We're two years in, and at this point, the results are kind of mixed.

Ximena, you spent a lot of time covering agriculture issues, and you have recently taken a very close look at how the Department of Agriculture has tried to deal with decades of discrimination against Black farmers. Yeah, no, exactly. And this all in part dates back over a century, right? There has been proven discrimination, whether that is farmers of color, particularly black farmers, that went into their county committee offices where it is that they can access the department to ask about loans and programs. And they were outright rejected, you know, often told to go away, to leave, to never come back. But even other instances, like they filled out the application wrong and no one helped them out or no one told them what options were.

And I'm so glad that we're talking about this and that you did all of this reporting because I have followed this issue a little bit with how it has bubbled up in Congress over the last couple of years, which is something we're going to talk about later in the podcast. And that, to put it kind of charitably, reduces it a little bit too much. But we're getting into the details with, and let's rewind, one key moment to start this conversation with is the fact that the agency settled a lawsuit back in 1999 over allegations that it discriminated against Black families. Tell us what the farmers alleged in that suit

and what was supposed to come out of that settlement. So that lawsuit was the first of many lawsuits from different groups. This one was particularly black farmers. It was called Pigford v. Glickman. And that was a class action lawsuit where basically what I described earlier, they said that the department unfairly denied their access to loans that the federal government often provides to farmers as a way for them to build up their businesses and even start farming to begin with, right? Farmers often

operate on rotations of capital. You have to take out a loan to be able to farm and then you pay off that loan with whatever it is that you harvest or produce. So if you don't get the loan, you don't get the farm. And the courts and the settlement found that, yes, in fact, the department had unfairly discriminated and blocked access to this vital financial lifeline for farmers. The outcome was supposed to be payments, I believe up to $50,000 for those that had been discriminated against. However, that didn't necessarily happen. There were confusing filing deadlines, different forms to prove that you had been discriminated against. There are some instances where advocates say even attorney malpractice came into play,

and these farmers were never able to get their settlement and often left the lawsuit in worse financial positions because now they have all the legal fees and everything else on top of that. You know, Ximena, you reported on the mess this seemed to have turned into following these lawsuits. And you also specifically talked to some farmers specifically in terms of what they were dealing with. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, I talked to farmers in different parts of the country. Some of them had even been a part of that Pigford lawsuit to begin with. And others, you know, saw kind of the generational detriments of seeing their grandparents being turned away from the department. Therefore, their parents, you know, didn't really trust the department.

And then therefore, they don't trust the department. And so it's generational mistrust into even resourcing what is supposed to be the average farmer's biggest lifeline, which is the agriculture department. The other thing is there was supposed to be a second settlement in 2010. The Obama administration tried to fix this. They said, we didn't do this right the first time. We're going to do it again. But again, the same issues.

So now we're here again in 2023 and Biden's trying to do it. And this was something that surprised me in your story because, you know, I covered the transition pretty closely. closely and I saw how blunt Biden was as he made appointments saying this administration is coming in to address inequity, to take a close look at policies and make sure that we are righting historic wrongs. Part of your reporting took a close look at a lot of data from during the Biden administration, from the past two years. And you paint a pretty clear picture of a lot of these issues still not being solved. Right. And I think the other thing that's very key to note in that transition time period is Biden brought back Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and he was Obama's Agriculture Secretary. Now, when Vilsack came back to the department, many advocates, they said, hey, he didn't fix

this the first time. How can we even trust that he's going to fix this the second time? Now, recent data that I analyzed particularly looked at what's called a direct loan. A direct loan is supposed to be one of the easiest farm loans for people to get. They're supposed to be for people that can't get credit from a private institution or a private bank, and they're for very basic necessities like purchasing land, equipment, repairs, things like that. However, even now we see that Black farmers and actually Asian farmers are rejected at higher rates. They withdraw their loans at all, you know, from even finishing the application process at higher rates. And they're accepted at the lowest

rates. And those margins are pretty big. Was there an explanation for that disparity? USDA has told me when I asked them about the numbers is they say that they're aware of issues that can contribute to this. They believe that their applications are just too complicated. So if you don't come from a background where you're used to filling out these forms over and over again year after year, you come into it, you're probably going to make mistakes. And therefore, you're going to get denied or you're not going to complete the process at all. And Ximena, you talked to one of these farmers, Eddie Lewis from Louisiana. Tell us a little bit more about him.

Yeah, Eddie is a sugar cane farmer in Louisiana. He has had his farm through multiple generations and has dealt with the department also for very many years. And he says that it's not just very difficult to know how to navigate the department, but he's almost concerned that his own son might not want to take over the family farm eventually, just because he's seen not only him go through some of the difficulties, but also the generations before. And remember, we have those generationals kind of distrust in the department that happens over and over again. It's hard to bring my little boy out there because, I mean, I don't know if this is going to be around when he's old enough to farm, because of what they're doing to me. They're going to put black farmers out of business altogether. He is hoping to get some of the payments that Congress recently passed that go towards farmers that might be on the verge of delinquency. This was an effort to kind of right a historical wrong.

He doesn't know if he's going to be able to qualify for those yet. All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we are going to take a look at what USDA is doing to try and fix all of this. And we're back. Ximena, how's the Department of Agriculture responded to all of this? So from the onset, the Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, got a lot of blowback from advocates, you know, even questioning if he was going to be able to fix any of these issues. The Biden administration did sign an executive order that allowed the Agriculture Department to put together what it calls an equity commission. It is a group of mostly folks that do not work for the Agriculture Department. And their job was to review as much of the department's policies, programs,

structure everything as possible, and come out with two reports. One of those reports came out last week. It's what they called the interim report, and it had over 30 recommendations on how the department could translate more materials to make them more accessible or change its program structure to make them easier for people to participate in them, apply for them, get access to them. Yet to be seen if the department implements many of these. Vilsack issued a response to that report where he highlights that the department is already doing a lot. They've already shortened some of their applications. They've created new programs. They are in the process of instituting some programs that Congress recently passed to address these issues. So we'll see kind of towards this year what they're able to do in addition to those things they claim they've already done. Now, in terms of a clock here, the Biden

administration is trying to play catch up in terms of addressing these concerns. At the same time, they are on a time limit. When we look at this first term for the Biden administration, what does this mean for all of the impacts here in the hopes of what they're trying to accomplish? The president is broadly expected to rerun for election, but the administration only has four years guaranteed, right? Even in some instances, you know, we don't know if there's going to be a change in secretary at any point during an administration. So it really is a time crunch. However, Congress has passed a few laws that I think gives them a couple things in their back pocket. For example, those loan payments for farmers that are, quote, economically distressed. So on the verge of losing their farms. But there's

a separate $2.2 billion where the administration is supposed to find a way to give that money to farmers that can prove that they were discriminated against in the past. Now, these are all programs that do take a long time to set up. And so I think that time crunch really comes into question here. How quickly can they help farmers that have been suffering for decades? But that gets into another big challenge, right? And it's a legal challenge and it's also a political challenge because in 2021, as part of the first big stimulus package that the Biden administration passed, there was this big loan program that was specifically targeted to black farmers. And that got a lot of legal pushback and it also got a lot of political pushback from Republicans who said,

you know, essentially this is discriminating against white farmers. And something you get into in the story is the fact that that program has now basically been rewritten and redone to have a much broader reach. And you pointed out a lot of people have questions about whether it'll now work as well. Right. And the ultimate question is, are the same Black farmers, or frankly, just farmers of color that would have benefited for the first program are all those same people going to benefit under the second program. And that is just not necessarily guaranteed because there is no race or ethnicity factor being taken into account for the second program. It's purely economic. And you're right. It's an interesting political

dynamic. One of the most prominent lawsuits that blocked the race-focused program was led not only by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, but Stephen Miller, the former Trump advisor. now. And House Republicans say that they're not keen on ideas to support programs that are racially targeted. So in this case, one focused on aid for Black farmers. How does this play into kind of any future steps when it comes to the Hill? And are there any key players here that stand out to you, Ximena? It is definitely limiting. It is notable that the way that Congress chose to fix the first program was by doing it in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the Democrat-led spending bill, right? So they knew that they could only do this with Dem support. So with a split Congress, it's very unlikely that there is a program like this that goes through. However, I think that folks like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, they are very focused on this issue. And with the Farm Bill upcoming, there have been talks about how to figure out socially disadvantaged farmers as a topic, whether that's farmers of color, young beginning farmers, veteran farmers even. How can we bring them up to speed to the same level as your traditional multi-generational white corn or soybean farmer?

So, Jimena, to end the conversation, let's just zoom out a lot because we've talked a lot about specific policies here and we've talked a lot about legislation to fix it and lawsuits. and decades of Black farmers not getting the money they needed, Black farmers feeling discriminated against, Black farmers dropping out of farming or losing a lot of money. What has been the long-term effect on all of this on Black farmers across the United States? It would probably be twofold. The first is very material, and that is there has been a 90% decline in Black-owned farmland over the course of the last century. A lot of that can really be seen as particularly during the civil rights era. really continue and spread and not just through generations, but also through and into other groups as well, whether that's Native American farmers, Hmong farmers, young beginning farmers as well. You know, if they also see that this department might not be for them, might not have

programs for them, they're not going to go to the department. Well, thank you so much for all of this reporting. Thank you. That will do it for today's episode. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Ximena Bustillo and I cover politics. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.