The United States Department of Agriculture is scrapping a decades-old policy meant to address the long history of race and gender discrimination by the federal agency.
The announcement came in July, with a long explanation.
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has independently determined that it will no longer employ the race- and sex-based 'socially disadvantaged' designation to provide increased benefits based on race and sex in the programs at issue in this regulation,” federal officials wrote, noting that the agency has faced a long history of litigation for alleged discrimination against BIPOC and women farmers in its many farm loan and benefits programs.
Two and a half decades of efforts to level that playing field with increased access to grants and loans for minority and women farmers have outgrown their purpose, officials concluded.
“Past discrimination has been sufficiently addressed and that further race- and sex-based remedies are no longer necessary or legally justified under current circumstances,” they wrote.
Minority and women farmers tend to disagree.
“We're still at a disadvantage,” said Narissa Ribera, a Diné woman farming traditional crops in Wheat Ridge and founder of Ch’il Indigenous foods, who called the policy shift extremely disappointing. “We still have a lot of hurdles from all the colonization, even to this generation.”
Ribera said USDA programs that targeted minority farmers are still essential for addressing historical injustices that decimated indigenous agricultural traditions.
“There's not very many of us, and I feel like part of that is by design,” she said. “There's a lot of history, and although we're healing and trying to recover from all of that, the damage that was done was so severe.”
Ribera has contracts for two USDA grants totaling about $33,000 to support her work. She was hoping to apply for additional funding to support her dream: farming on her homeland in the Navajo Nation.
“I would love to dry land farm it with native grasses that we would collect and use as a flour,” she said. “It definitely needs funding. But of course, all of this happened, so that just cut everything off.”
“Socially Disadvantaged” historical context
The anti-discrimination policies scrapped by the USDA were hard-won through decades of litigation. Coalitions of minority farmers alleged widespread discrimination in USDA employment, loan and grant distribution, ultimately prompting the agency to offer redress.
“There was not an equal platform, if you will, with the USDA, stemming back to slavery,” said Tammy Gray-Steele, founder and executive director of the National Women in Agriculture Association.
Black farmers, she said, have been left behind after hundreds of years of blatant discrimination, like not being able to access farm credit. In her opinion, the USDA’s anti-discrimination policies have not been perfect and should be modified. But doing away with them altogether is a massive blow to the community.
“It's going to hurt real bad,” she said. “It's going to take minority groups and (Black) farmers off the map. It'll wipe us out.”
The USDA did not directly address KUNC’s questions. But an agency spokesperson justified the move in an email.
“President Biden and Secretary Vilsack blatantly looked for any way possible to give taxpayer dollars to anyone they could based on the color of their skin, not based on merit or need.” The email said. It described the latest policy shifts as part of a larger initiative “to weed out DEI” efforts at the USDA.
The federal policy shifts will not directly affect USDA programs administered by the Colorado Department of Agriculture, according to an emailed statement from Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Kate Greenberg.
“We all do better when different voices and different people are part of our communities and this policy change is a step backward in helping expand the diversity of the agricultural industry in Colorado and nationwide,” Greenberg wrote in an email. “In Colorado, we celebrate our diverse agricultural industry.”
