The Chronicle, U.S.A.: black farmers

Editor's note: This is independent research/notes because I am angered at not finding this issue resolved and finding very little detail on the issue. What is the problem? Why can't the black farmer have what is rightfully his? Why won't the United States Senate vote to appropriate the funds for the black farmer's settlement? If it looks like racism, walks like racism and talks like racism, what do you think most people think? That it is racism? Why is the USDA so set against helping farmers? I do not understand. I just don't understand this issue. I will revise my research/notes periodically as all of this information comes from sources other than myself.

Congress established a new remedial process for relief under the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (”2008 Farm Bill”). This case, the Consolidated Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation, consists of discrimination claims by African-American farmers authorized by Section 14012 of the 2008 Farm Bill.
You should visit this web site.
You may feel as if this has nothing to do with you but did you know many black people today come from a line of farmers? They were scattered throughout the south. Many of us were deemed sharecroppers, however.
According to Wikipedia, sharecropping is a system of farming in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e.g., 50% of the crop). Sharecropping has a long history across the globe however my focus today is the southern United States. Sharecropping occurred extensively in colonial Africa, Scotland, and Ireland, and came into wide use in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). The South had been devastated by war; planters had ample land but little money for wages or taxes. At the same time most of the former slaves had labor but no money and no land; they rejected the kind of gang labor that typified slavery. Similarity to serfdom or indenture, it has been seen as an issue of land reform.

Odesio answers a similar question on straightdope.com.

"The first thing you have to understand is how labor works in relation to cotton in the days of yore. Cotton was an especially labor intensive crop and when it was being planted and especially when it was being harvested you needed a large labor pool to get the job done. When the planting and harvesting was done you just didn't need the labor pool at all. So the planters after the Civil War have a problem. How do they ensure they have the necessary labor at the necessary time and how do they get that labor for as cheap a price as possible?

The answer was the share crop system. Landowners would rent out property to tenants, perhaps give them a little seed money, and buy up the cotton when harvest time came. Most of the tenant farmers were illiterate and all of them were pretty much uneducated. This made it easy for the landowners to control the price of the cotton and to determine just how much money the tenants owed them at the end of the year. "Sorry, Mr. Johnson, but it looks like even though you had a bumper crop that you still owe me $25 at the end of the season."

Whether sharecropping was more efficient than the antebellum plantations is hard to say. To begin with it's rather difficult at times to figure out whether an antebellum plantation was making a profit in any given year because they didn't all keep efficient financial records like a corporation would. I've run across notes from a plantation with an I.O.U. written down for 1853 but I'll be damned if I ever ran across an documentation that the loan was ever paid back. Nor do I typically run across a useful ledger detailing income and expenses like I would for a rail road or a shipping company.

From a social standpoint it was also a good way for the elite to maintain control over labor, particularly black labor. One of the biggest race riots in Arkansas occurred in 1919 when members of the various farmer's unions attempted to get better prices for their cotton. Whites seemed to think that this was insurrection." -- Odesio

In Reconstruction-era United States, sharecropping was one of few options for penniless freedmen to conduct subsistence farming and support themselves and their families. (Another solution was a crop-lien system, where the farmer was extended credit for seed and other supplies by the merchant.) It was a stage beyond simple hired labor, because the sharecropper had an annual contract. During Reconstruction, the Freedman's Bureau wrote and enforced the contracts.
Don't worry, I'm getting to my point, however, in the sharecropping system croppers were assigned a plot of land to work, and in exchange owed the owner a share of the crop at the end of the season, usually one-half. The owner provided the tools and farm animals. Farmers who owned their own mule and plow were at a higher stage and are called tenant farmers; they paid the landowner less, usually only a third of each crop. In both cases the farmer kept the produce of gardens.
The sharecropper purchased seed, tools and fertilizer, as well as food and clothing, on credit from a local merchant, or sometimes from a plantation store. When the harvest came, the cropper would harvest the whole crop and sell it to the merchant who had extended credit. Purchases and the landowner's share were deducted and the cropper kept the difference—or added to his debt.
Though the arrangement protected sharecroppers from the negative effects of a bad crop, many sharecroppers (both black and white) were economically confined to serf-like conditions of poverty. To work the land, sharecroppers had to buy seed and implements, sometimes from the plantation owner who often charged exorbitant prices against the sharecropper's next season. Arrangements also typically gave half or less of the crop to the sharecropper, and the sale price in some cases was set by the landowner. Lacking the resources to market their crops independently, the sharecropper was sometimes be compensated in scrip redeemable only at the plantation.
Thus the cost of production and price of sale were both largely controlled by the land owner, with the sharecropper having little, if any, margin for profit. These factors made sharecroppers dependent on the plantation owners in a way that perpetuated some of the aspects of slavery, and in the late 19th century maintained a stable, low-cost work force that replaced slave labor; it was the bottom rung in the Southern tenancy ladder.
Sharecroppers formed unions in the 1930s, beginning in Tallapoosa County, Alabama in 1931, and Arkansas in 1934. Membership in the Southern Tenant Farmers Union included both blacks and poor whites. As leadership strengthened, meetings became more successful, and protest became more vigorous, landlords responded with a wave of terror.^[24]
Sharecroppers' strikes in Arkansas and the Bootheel of Missouri, the 1939 Missouri Sharecroppers' Strike, were documented in "Oh Freedom After While".^[25]

Machines helped stop the sharecropping system. It replaced human labor. However, how did black farmers make the jump from sharecropping to owning and profiting from their farmland? Did they finally pay off the debt to Mr. Charley? (I am still researching this question. Feel free to help if you like.)

When the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was created, 90% of the American people were farmers. It was not until almost two decades after it's creation, that Cabinet status was achived by USDA on February 9, 1889. The Federal Farm Loan Act became law, July 1916. This Act sought to respond to the inadequacy of credit at reasonable rates for farmers, according to The Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association. Many black farmers across the nation experienced discrimination in their dealings with U.S. Department of Agriculture agencies in their states. Across the nation, black farmers alleged, and the USDA later agreed, they were denied access to loans and subsidies provided by the government.^[6] On a national level, farm subsidies that were afforded to white farmers were not afforded to black farmers.^[7] Since they were denied government loans, emergency or disaster assistance, and other aid, many black farmers lost their farms and their homes.[8] The BFAA also say they now represent less than 3% of the population. In North Carolina there has been a 64% decline in African American farmers in the past 15 years, from 6,996 farms in 1978 to 2,498 farms in 1992.
You can draw your own conclusions.