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antoine-roquentin · 7 years

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The superficial “downtrodden Trump voter” story has indeed become an unproductive cliché. And upheavals in industries with larger, more diverse workforces than coal, such as retail, deserve close attention as well.

But our decades-long fixation with Appalachia is still justified. For starters, the political transformation of the region is genuinely stunning. West Virginia was one of just six states that voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980; last year, it gave Trump his second-largest margin of victory, forty-two points.

More importantly, the region’s afflictions cannot simply be cordoned off and left to burn out. The opioid epidemic that now grips whole swaths of the Northeast and Midwest got its start around the turn of the century in central Appalachia, with the shameless targeting of a vulnerable customer base by pharmaceutical companies hawking their potent painkillers. The epidemic spread outward from there, sure as an inkblot on a map. People like Frank Rich may be callous enough to want to consign Appalachians to their “poisons,” but the quarantine is not that easy.

We should be thankful, then, for what Steven Stoll, a historian at Fordham University, has delivered in Ramp Hollow: not just another account of Appalachia’s current plight, but a journey deeper in time to help us understand how the region came to be the way it is. For while much has been written about the region of late, the historical roots of its troubles have received relatively little recent scrutiny. Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance’s best-selling memoir of growing up in an Appalachian family transplanted from eastern Kentucky to the flatlands of southwestern Ohio, cast his people’s afflictions largely as a matter of a culture gone awry, of ornery self-reliance turned to resentful self-destruction. In White Trash, the historian Nancy Isenberg traced the history of the country’s white underclass to the nation’s earliest days, but she focused more on how that underclass was depicted and scorned than on the material particulars of its existence.

Stoll offers the ideal complement. He has set out to tell the story of how the people of a sprawling region of our country—one of its most physically captivating and ecologically bountiful—went from enjoying a modest but self-sufficient existence as small-scale agrarians for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to a dreary dependency on the indulgence of coal barons or the alms of the government.

Stoll refuses to accept that there is something intrinsically lacking in Appalachians—people who, after all, managed to carve out a life on such challenging, mountainous terrain. Something was done to them, and he is going to figure out who did it. He links their fate to other threatened agrarian communities, from rice growers in the Philippines to English peasants at the time of the Enclosure Acts. “Whenever we see hunger and deprivation among rural people, we need to ask a simple question: What went on just before the crisis that might have caused it?” he writes. “Seeing the world without the past would be like visiting a city after a devastating hurricane and declaring that the people there have always lived in ruins.”

The missing history is above all a story about land and dispossession. For roughly a century, starting before the country’s founding, the settlers of central Appalachia—defined by Stoll as the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and most of West Virginia—managed a makeshift life as smallholders. The terms of that “holding” were murky, to say the least: property claims in the region were a tangled patchwork of grants awarded to French and Indian or Revolutionary War generals and other notables, which were commonly diced and sliced among speculators, and the de facto claims made by those actually inhabiting the land. In some cases, those settlers managed to get official deeds by the legal doctrine of “adverse possession”; in many others, they were simply allowed to keep working the land by distant landlords who had never laid eyes on it.

Regardless of the legal letter, the settlers carved out their “homeplace,” as Stoll calls it. He is evocative in describing their existence, but stops short of romanticizing it, and takes pains to note that their presence was itself founded on the dispossession of the natives. They practiced “swidden” agriculture—burning out one clearing for cultivation, then letting it regenerate while rotating to another area—likely introduced by Scandinavians mixed in with the predominant Scots-Irish. Survival depended on shared use of the boundless forest beyond one’s own hollow or ridge—the “commons”—for hunting game, raising livestock, small-scale logging, and foraging bounties such as uganost (wild greens), toothworth, corn salad, and ramps. “People with control over a robust landscape work hard, but they don’t go hungry,” remarks Stoll.

Yet it was the area’s very natural bounty that would ultimately spell the end of this self-sufficiency. The Civil War’s incursions into the Shenandoah Valley and westward exposed the region’s riches in exactly the minerals demanded by a growing industrial economy. (By 1880, there were 56,500 steam engines in the country, all voracious for coal.) “Her hills and valleys are full of wealth which only needs development to attract capitalists like a magnet,” declared one joint-stock company. In swarmed said capitalists, often in cahoots with local power brokers from Charleston and Wheeling.

The confused legal property claims offered the aspiring coal barons a window: they could approach longtime inhabitants and say, essentially, “Look, we all know you don’t have full title to this land, but if you sell us the mineral rights, we’ll let you stay.” With population growth starting to crimp the wide-ranging agrarian existence, some extra cash in hand was hard to reject. Not that it was very much: one farmer turned over his 740 acres for a mere $3.58 per acre—around $80 today. By 1889, a single company, Flat Top Land Trust, had amassed rights to 200,000 acres in McDowell County in southern West Virginia; just thirteen years later, McDowell was producing more than five million tons of coal per year.

The coal industry had a positively soft touch in the early going, though, compared to timber. Stoll describes the arrival of the “steam skidder,” which “looks like a locomotive with a ship’s mast.” It “clanks and spits, chugs steam, and sweats grease from its wheels and pistons” as workers use cables extending from the mast to grab fallen trees, “pulling or skidding the logs hundreds of feet to a railroad flatbed.” The steam skidder crews would cut everything they could, “leaving the slopes barren but for the stumps, branches, and bark that burned whenever a spark from a railroad wheel or glowing ash from a tinderbox fell on the detritus.”

The harvest was staggering: “Of the 10 million acres that had never been cut in 1870, only 1.5 million stood in 1910.” Stoll quotes one witness from the time: “One sees these beautiful hills and valleys stripped of nature’s adornment; the hills denuded of their forests, the valleys lighted by the flames of coke-ovens and smelting furnaces; their vegetation seared and blackened . . . and one could wish that such an Arcadia might have been spared such ravishment. But the needs of the race are insatiable and unceasing.” Indeed, they were. As one northern lumberman put it: “All we want here is to get the most we can out of this country, as quick as we can, and then get out.”

Such rapaciousness did not leave much of the commons that had sustained the makeshift agrarian existence. Of course, there was a new life to replace it: mining coal or logging trees. By 1929, 100,000 men, out of a total state population of only 1.7 million, worked in 830 mines across West Virginia alone. But it is in that very shift that Stoll identifies the region’s turn toward immiseration. With the land spoiled and few non-coal jobs available, workers were at the mercy of whichever coal company dominated their corner of the region. They lived in camps and were paid in scrip usable only at the company store; even the small gardens they were allowed in the camps were geared less toward self-reliance than toward cutting the company’s costs to feed them.

Stoll quotes a professor at Berea College in eastern Kentucky who captured the new reality in a 1924 book: The miner “had not realized that he would have to buy all his food. . . He has to pay even for water to drink.” Having moved their families to a shanty in the camp, miners owed rent even when the mine closed in the industry’s cyclical downturns, which served to “bind them as tenants by compulsion . . . under leases by which they can be turned out with their wives and children on the mountainside in midwinter if they strike.” As Stoll sums it up, “Their dependency on company housing and company money spent for food in company-owned stores amounted to a constant threat of eviction and starvation.” Of course, Merle Travis had this dynamic nailed way back in his 1947 classic, “Sixteen Tons”: “You load sixteen tons, what do you get? / Another day older and deeper in debt. / Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go, / I owe my soul to the company store.”

Nor did the industries bring even a modicum of mass prosperity to compensate for this dependency. By 1960, more than half the homes in central Appalachia still lacked central plumbing, helping give rise to all manner of cruel stereotypes and harsh commentary, such as this, from the British historian Arnold Toynbee: “The Appalachians present the melancholy spectacle of a people who have acquired civilization and then lost it.” An extensive 1981 study of eighty Appalachian counties by the Highlander Research and Educational Center in Tennessee confirmed that, in Stoll’s summary, coal company capital had brought “stagnation, not human betterment,” and a “correlation between corporate control and inadequate housing.”

“Banks in coal counties couldn’t invest in home construction or other local improvements because the greater share of their deposits belonged to the companies,” Stoll writes. “No sooner did that capital flow in than it flowed out, depriving banks of funds stable enough for community lending.” Not only had the coal industry, along with timber, supplanted an earlier existence, but it was actively stifling other forms of growth and development.

Stoll recounts a scene from 1988, when a man named Julian Martin got up at a public hearing to oppose a proposed strip-mining project in West Virginia. Martin described the disappearance of Bull Creek along the Coal River, which he had explored as a kid decades earlier. He pointed out that places that had seen the most strip mining had also become the very poorest in the state. “My daddy was a coal miner, and I understand being out of work, okay?” Martin said. “I’ve been down that road myself. And I know you’ve got to provide for your family. But I’m saying they’re only giving us two options. They’re saying, ‘Either starve—or destroy West Virginia.’ And surely to God there must be another option.”

It’s a powerful moment, and it captures the tragic political irony that is one of the most lasting fruits of the region’s dependency: despite all the depredations of resource extraction—all the mine collapses and explosions (twenty-nine killed at Upper Big Branch in 2010) and slurry floods (125 killed in the Buffalo Creek disaster of 1972) and chemical spills (thousands without drinking water after the contamination of the Elk River in 2014)—many inhabitants, and their elected representatives, remain fiercely protective of the responsible industries. Even the empathetic Stoll can’t help let his frustration show, as he urges the “white working class of the southern mountains to stop identifying their interests with those of the rich and powerful, a position that leaves them poorer and more powerless than they have ever been.”

Well, yes, but many a book has been written to explain why exactly the opposite trend has been happening, as Appalachia turns ever redder. It shouldn’t be that hard to make sense of the coal-related part of this political turn, and voters’ rightful assessment that coastal Democrats are hostile to the industry. The region has been dominated by mining for so long that coal has become deeply interwoven with its whole sense of self. Just last month, I was speaking with a couple of retired union miners in Fairmont, West Virginia, who are highly critical of both coal companies and Trump, and suffer the typical physical ailments from decades spent underground. Yet both said without hesitation that they missed the work for the camaraderie and sense of purpose it provided. Their ancestors identified as agrarians; they identified as miners.

Stoll is on more original and compelling ground as he tries to determine what that “other option” might be for the region. He imagines a “Commons Communities Act,” under which land would be set aside for shared use, not unlike the great forests of old—farming, timber harvesting, hunting and gathering, vegetable gardening, cattle grazing—by a specified number of families. Residents would own their own homes and could pursue whatever sort of work they cared to beyond their use of the commons. Social services and education in the communities would be paid for by a surcharge on the top 1 percent of U.S. households and an “industrial abandonment tax” on any corporation that “closed its operations in any city or region of the United States within the last twenty years . . . and moved elsewhere, leaving behind toxic waste and poverty.”

It is an admittedly fantastical vision that will fare better with Wendell Berry than with Congress or the West Virginia legislature. But in one sense, it is not so far-fetched after all. Coal is on the wane in central Appalachia, however much uptick it enjoys in the Trump era. Not only is it being undercut by natural gas, but the easily obtainable reserves are gradually tapping out, at long last. Coal’s decline is having wrenching effects on its dependents, not least the depletion of local government and school coffers. Something will have to replace it, and the odds of Amazon picking Morgantown or Charleston for its second headquarters are slim. West Virginia’s population has fallen by nearly 10 percent from its peak in 1950, a reversal of the crowding that helped bring the agrarian existence to an end more than a century ago. So perhaps it is not so crazy after all to suppose that a region so proud of its heritage could reach back to an earlier, almost-forgotten part of it, before the steam skidder showed up, and lay new claim to its land.

#sometimes i feel like i'm the only one who gets maudlin for dispossessed americana

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luv-engineering · 7 years

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Incredible, practical advice I stumbled across The Market Gardener while searching for ways to (organically) maximize the yield I could get from my tiny back yard vegetable garden. Even though I knew the book was geared toward someone planning to sell their produce as opposed to a home gardener like myself, I decided to buy the book based on reviews and what I saw in the book via Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature. (I bought it from a different store only because I had a gift card that needed to be used.) This book does not disappoint. Go to Amazon

Excellent book for the beginning market farmer It's a very good book with detailed explanations of various crop types and tools. The division of topics into chapters is well done and the explanations are good and thorough. There is a lot of focus on the author's own farm and farming habits, but he does discuss alternatives and why he chooses certain ways of doing things. The only reason I'm giving this book 4 stars instead of 5 is that the tables and charts are not very legible in the Kindle version of the book, which is the copy I purchased. Go to Amazon

read before you start your farm! will change your whole perspective! Dude is sharp, a must read for any gardener. I will continue to watch for further info posted from his farm. He boast $140k per yr production on 1.5 acres. With what we produce I believe it is entirely feasable. Has great ideas on keeping weeds down organically and has great info on tools that make a small operation a ton less work. Just the introduction to the few tools of his trade was worth the price of the book. The info on crop rotation, crop planning, and settup...totally invaluable. I work for an organic farm but aside from that I would honestly suggest that everyone who ever plans on vegetable gardening shoulf read this book. Yiu will probably go smaller scale with higher production and alot less effort. Go to Amazon

Excellent Resource for the aspiring farmer A lot of people that don't read this book are quick to say things like, "yeah, you say he makes 6 figures, but he's in a city and supplies restaurants", and that his method wont work in other locations. First off, yes, he does make 6 figures, but he lives in the country (60 min or so from the city), and while he does supply restaurants, he mostly supplies families and sells at farmers markets. Him and his wife also work about 40 hrs a week and he hires one or two people seasonally and shuts down for about 3 months in the winter. His book shows in excellent detail how he has achieved his success over time (not overnight), and the steps are very practical for other locations. OF COURSE there will be things you need to adjust if you apply this method in other areas (and any potential farmer should know that), but the information is extremely practical and relevant no matter where you are. If you want to do micro-intensive farming, this is a wonderful resource and shows you the things you need to do and start thinking about. I am currently looking for land where I will start my own micro-farm operation, and while I will not use this book exclusively (every farm is different), it's going to be a major reference. Of note, Jean Martin has recently started to integrate permaculture into his operation, and that information is not contained in this reference since he's just started in that endeavor. It is still an excellent reference for the aspiring organic grower. Personally, I very-much appreciate his common-sense approach on standardized beds and hand tools that are designed for those beds. His practices will not only give me fantastic food, but will also help me to become more physically fit through efficient manual labor, which as someone who works behind a desk, I am craving. He also shows how he looks at his crop value, crop rotation, how he works his greenhouse, transplants, and many examples of his spreadsheets that keep his business running a profit; the list goes on and on... I can't recommend this book enough. Go to Amazon

A must read for beginner and seasoned gardeners alike! One of the best books around for small/urban based farmers and larger market gardeners/farmers like myself. Gives great info that any beginner and seasoned garners will benefit from. Its always great to see other perspectives, ideas when it comes to gardening and farming! I woud say this is a must have read! inspires and gets you excited to try something new the following growing season! Go to Amazon

Five Stars The Market Gardener is for seasoned and new alike Very good book Great Book Easy to Read Four Stars Five Stars A Wealth of Practical Information Easy read. Tons of A warning to aspiring farmers

#Engineering #book

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michaelfallcon · 5 years

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The Sprudge Coffee Guide To Mumbai

Mumbai is a sensational city. India’s economic capital, the home base of Bollywood, is a food-loving metropolis, offering a pleasing, intense mixture of stimuli. There is always something around the corner to experience, eat, or drink in Mumbai.

The beverage of choice here is not coffee, but chai. The tapri chaiwallah (chai vendor) is as prevalent here as a bagel shop is in New York City or palm trees are in Hollywood. Sold in tiny 7mL cups and consumed multiple times a day, the chaiwallah’s job never ends. Chai (as many westerners now know) is generally prepared using black tea, sugar, and one of several spices, including saffron, ginger, and lemongrass. Each chaiwallah prides themselves on their technique and produces several hundred liters of the stuff daily for the insatiable thirst of the Mumbaikar.

Mumbai’s first real exposure to espresso-based beverages was in 1996, when the national chain Cafe Coffee Day, or CCD, opened its bright interiors to the country. A menu of espresso, cappuccinos, lattes, and sweetened espresso beverages, iced and cold was offered up in a stylish, comfortable setting. A big hit among students and urban professionals, the chain capitalized on sugary-sweet beverages presented in kitschy cups. Today, the big green giant Starbucks has also found its niche in Mumbai as it increases locations and tests the limits of expensive coffee. A testament to the wealth and spending habits of Mumbai is that a cup of coffee costs more at a Starbucks in India than it does anywhere in the world. And its profitability is growing.

The Third Wave initially hit Mumbai in 2009 when theindianbean.co and Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters started selling their ethically sourced coffee beans from single farms across southern Indian states. South India is the prevalent grower of coffee in India. Baba Budan, a Sufi saint, is said to have smuggled seven coffee beans to India in the 16th century and planted them in what is today known as Chikmagalur.

Today, Mumbai’s coffee scene is an amalgamation of hungry entrepreneurs and self-taught or professionally trained coffee enthusiasts. Some are trying to expand their presence overseas, while others are consciously choosing to remain local. For lovers of coffee, all this means is something that can be best phrased using a Hindi colloquialism: “picture abhi baki hain“—the show is just getting started.

Let’s dive in.

Kalopsia Artisan Coffee

Co-founder Aasma Khan is a passionate barista trainer with five years of coffee experience. Today, along with wildlife researcher Prakash Borana, she’s created a bright, fun, and quaint space to exhibit some of the finest Indian coffees. Focused on microlots and rare varieties, Kalopsia is the newest cafe on this list, but if you’re a true speciality coffee lover, the first sip will be enough to convince you that it’s by far one of the best coffee shops in Mumbai today. They face some stiff competition with some major chain coffee and tea shops situated right next to them, but their moderate pricing and exemplary service are getting them noticed—and fast.

One of the two shops in the country using Sanremo espresso machines, they’re pulling the most consistent shots of coffee I’ve had the pleasure of tasting in a decade. Definitely try the microlot Tattvamasi for a bright, juicy and creamy mouthfeel of pomegranate, jackfruit, and orange rind. Khan and Borana’s attention to detail can be found in the beautifully hand-painted décor and most definitely in every single coffee they serve.

Kalopsia Artisan Coffee is located at Shop No. 5, Pearl Heaven Society, Chappel Road, Opposite Salt Water Café, Near Lilavati Hospital, Bandra (W), Mumbai. Follow them on Instagram.

KC Roasters

Founded by a trio, now the show is run entirely run by one man: Australia native Shannon D’Souza. D’Souza’s grandfather owns and runs a coffee farm in South India and has been consistently delivering speciality coffee to Australia and other countries for decades. Combining the family tradition of coffee and his love for the Sydney coffee culture, D’Souza is making just more than amazing flat whites in Mumbai. Inside his cozy Chium Village cafe, you’ll find a complete black interior with a majestic Probat 150 taking up most of the space. Initially, customers would put their coffee cups to rest inside the cooling tray of the Probat, leading D’Souza to innovate an actual tabletop for the machine. You can sip an Amrut-cask-aged pour-over from the Kelagur Estate or have it as a honey-processed dark roast, served on the actual roaster!

Their Maravullah espresso is to date one of the most flavorful espressos I’ve had in Mumbai—by a long kilometer. The small cafe gets busy with regulars chatting away with each other as well as the baristas. The local expat community and older native residents have welcomed KC Roasters with open arms into their Mumbai.

KC Roasters is located at 6, Chuim Village Rd, Khar, Chuim Village, Danda, Khar West, Mumbai. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Blue Tokai Coffee

Everything about Blue Tokai Coffee fits right in with what you’d expect from a modern speciality coffee shop. Subdued colors, easy-going vibes, and a happy mingling of coffee driven people. A small shelf offers a variety of manual brewing equipment and accessories along with roast-date-printed coffee bags. Founders Matt Chitharanjan and Namrata Asthana started Blue Tokai as an e-commerce platform, selling coffee beans and equipment online before opening their cafe. (They also feature some of the best sesame seed bagels in Mumbai.) Blue Tokai roasts its own coffees, sourced ethically from farms across India. They also work closely with some small farmers to ensure fair prices and try to get as involved in the harvesting process as possible. Try the Vienna Roast pour-over or request a Silver Oaks blend as an AeroPress if you’re longing for floral, raisin, and nut tasting notes.

The shop is always filled with a smattering of TV and film personalities, directors, and aspiring screenwriters due to several film offices in the neighborhood. The shop is also a stone’s throw away from the recently cleaned up Versova Beach, giving you a perfect excuse to grab a coffee on the go.

Blue Tokai Coffee has multiple locations around Mumbai. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Bombay Island Coffee Roasters

Opened in 2018 Bombay Island Coffee Roasters offers superior coffee in an industrial warehouse setting. Cofounder Rupal Jain, a chartered accountant by profession, fell in love with coffee while studying for her accounting exams. So much so that she decided to leap to Singapore to obtain her SCA certification for coffee roasting. The first thing she did after returning was to buy a Probat 150 and start roasting. Today, Bombay Island supplies coffee to cruise ships, restaurants, and small coffee shops around the country. Located in Malad, Bombay Island Coffee Roasters resembles a hipster cafe that you’d find in any nook of the world. A wide variety of coffee paraphernalia adorns its neatly organized shelves. Coffee decals are stuck onto the walls, a Nuova Simonelli espresso machine tops the bar, and the star of the shop is the roaster, positioned for all to marvel at. An ode to the spices of India, their signature spiced iced latte features freshly ground star anise, cinnamon, and nutmeg combined to make a delicious coffee experience.

Bombay Island Coffee Roasters is located at 33 New Sonal Link Industrial Estate next to Navnit Motors, New Link Rd, Malad West, Mumbai. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Dhaval Mehta is a digital marketing consultant based in Mumbai, India. This is Dhaval Mehta’s first feature for Sprudge.

The Sprudge Coffee Guide To Mumbai published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

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shebreathesslowly · 5 years

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The Sprudge Coffee Guide To Mumbai

Let’s dive in.

Kalopsia Artisan Coffee

Kalopsia Artisan Coffee is located at Shop No. 5, Pearl Heaven Society, Chappel Road, Opposite Salt Water Café, Near Lilavati Hospital, Bandra (W), Mumbai. Follow them on Instagram.

KC Roasters

KC Roasters is located at 6, Chuim Village Rd, Khar, Chuim Village, Danda, Khar West, Mumbai. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Blue Tokai Coffee

Blue Tokai Coffee has multiple locations around Mumbai. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Bombay Island Coffee Roasters

Dhaval Mehta is a digital marketing consultant based in Mumbai, India. This is Dhaval Mehta’s first feature for Sprudge.

from Sprudge https://ift.tt/2tZRBoQ

#Sprudge

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billgsoto · 7 years

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Racial Equity in the Farm Bill: Barriers for Farmers of Color

From left: Linda Newkirk, Farm Services Agency, Arkansas State Executive Director, Mildred Barnes-Griggs, consultant, East Arkansas Enterprise Community, Inc., Charlie Williams, United States Department of Agriculture, Arkansas Strike Team Leader and Hillary Haddigan, Heifer International look at a turnip grown at the EAEC in Forrest City, Arkansas. The EAEC is a beneficiary of technical assistance available for crop production, management, harvesting, food security, value added products and marketing options through the Seeds of Change Implementation Plan. The Seeds of Change Implementation Plan was organized to use sustainable agriculture to build food systems in the Arkansas Delta. The program has evolved into the Arkansas Delta Seeds of Change Initiative. USDA photo by Bob Nichols

Editor’s Note: This blog post is the second in a multi-part series by NSAC Policy Intern Noah McDonald that explores how the next Farm Bill can advance racial equity in food and agriculture. The first post in this series focused on the historical context of racial equity and the farm bill and highlighted some of the historical policies that have contributed to the food and farming system we have today. This second post explores how historical inequities and injustices have carried over into the present day, and the challenges that farmers and food/farm advocates continue to face in accessing federal programs and resources. The content within this blog was the result of a series of interviews that took place with National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) members between October and November 2017.

Farming has always been a risky business – results are never guaranteed, hard work is always required, and the potential challenges can change daily. Farmers of color – including immigrant, refugee, tribal, and farmworker communities – face an additional set of barriers, both to entering and to sustaining successful careers in agriculture. Some of these barriers have been broken down over the years, however, many obstacles have also intensified and new ones have also cropped up.

Historically, farmers of color have not participated in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs (e.g., conservation, disaster, and loan assistance programs) to the same extent as other farmers, due in part to a combination of inadequate outreach and assistance and discrimination towards these communities.

Both individual farmers and organizations that support farmers of color continue to face challenges in expanding access to these valuable USDA assistance programs and resources. But what exactly are the barriers these farmers and organizations face, and why do they persist? This blog post explores how both institutional racism (as opposed to interpersonal racism) and marginalization* contribute to inequitable access to federal resources.

*Marginalization is when people/organizations/groups are excluded from accessing resources held by a privileged group based upon their judged ideological, cultural, political, and/or social proximity to a privileged group. Marginalization is one of the many forms of inequity. This post will use the terms ‘marginalized’ or ‘marginal’, and we must understand it within this context.

Along with Resources, Outreach Is Key

In speaking with our members, one of the most important themes that emerged is that federal programs, regardless of their specific focus on or priority for socially-disadvantaged farmers, serve a fundamental role in supporting farmers of color and their farming operations. Some of the most cited farm bill programs include: Farm Service Agency (FSA) loans, federal crop insurance, the Conservation Stewardship Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program, as well as a host of other outreach and research programs.

Programs that are specifically targeted towards socially disadvantaged farmers, including the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers (“2501 program”) as well as funding set-asides within other programs, primarily serve as a mechanism for increasing access to USDA programs. As discussed in the last post, funding set-asides are critical to making sure that already limited federal resources are accessible to farmers of color and other underserved farmers whose participation rates are disproportionately low. Many farmers and organizations would face further marginalization without these set-asides and targeted assistance.

The Southeastern Michigan Producers Association (SEMPA), a farmer group that is affiliated with NSAC member, Michigan Integrated Food and Farming Systems (MIFFS), knows first-hand the importance of targeted funding and programs for farmers of color.

Cary Junior, co-founder and acting director of SEMPA, spoke to NSAC about the challenges still faced by farmers of color, despite the progress made over the years:

“Although USDA has done a pretty good job at outreach with our [mostly Black] farmers, as of now, there’s still a lot of distrust we’re still having to work through.”

Many of the farmers Junior works with in southeastern Michigan, especially older Black farmers, are still unwilling to work with USDA because of the Department’s legacy of discrimination. They feel that in the past, USDA had not made a sincere effort to support them in the manner in which they supported other farmers (for more information on that legacy read the following article).

The distrust and hesitancy that Junior’s farmer constituents feel is an embodiment of why outreach programs are a critical part of changing the relationship between USDA and farmers of color. Programs like Section 2501 support farmer and farm advocate organizations in helping to form and better solidify these connections, and they serve to fill longstanding gaps in resources, communications, and technical assistance services. In some cases, organizations supported by Section 2501 grants go beyond just providing outreach and resources by adding hands-on work with local farmers. For instance, many organizations will connect farmers with advocates who can accompany them in person to meetings with USDA offices or with lenders, and who can also help them understand contracts or fill out program applications.

Compounded Challenges for Beginning Farmers

Challenges for farmers of color are compounded when they are also just starting or seeking to start careers in agriculture. Much of this struggle is caused by a large and persistent wealth gap between White Americans and African Americans – on average, Whites hold 13 times more wealth than African Americans, a gap that holds across income and class levels (for more information on the racial wealth gap click here).

Tyler Nesbit is the Education and Outreach Coordinator for Florida Organic Growers (FOG), an NSAC member organization based in Gainesville FL. During his interview with NSAC, Nesbit made some particularly pointed observations about the potential for organic and urban agriculture to create economic opportunity for communities of color.

“One of the things I’ve encountered while working in the Learning Garden [a space at a local community garden where FOG holds training workshops] is that there is a lot of ‘untapped’ informal knowledge around farming and gardening in the surrounding community,” Nesbit said. “There is a lot of intergenerational [agricultural] knowledge in the community.”

In spaces like FOG’s Learning Garden, beginning farmers have the opportunity to learn and gain skills directly from those in their community. In these types of environments, they are able to get started on their path to a career in agriculture without putting forward substantial resources of their own.

“Neighborhood association leaders [in Gainesville, FL] have communicated to us that there is a need for local economic development in the area – so FOG is incorporating that piece into our outreach activities,” said Nesbit. “[Organic farming] is a way to gain valuable skills in an industry that is continually growing – folks can begin to think of organic farming as a career path and as a viable way of producing economic security. That is part of our objective and goal at FOG.”

In addition to their education resources, FOG also operates an organic cost share program, which provides financial assistance to producers and handlers of agricultural products who are obtaining or renewing their certification under the National Organic Program (NOP). This assistance is especially critical for many beginning farmers and farmers of color, who often do not have the up-front capital to pay for costly organic certification. FOG is also considering applying for a Community Food Project (CFP) grant through USDA in the future. Many other organizations around the country have used funds from CFP to launch programs that support tribal food sovereignty, community garden development and urban agriculture, youth food justice, and healthy food access. Click here to see project abstracts from past awardees.

While barriers to entry in agriculture exist for all new and aspiring farmers, it is critical that organizations and governmental programs also recognize the unique barriers experienced by farmers of color, which include distrust resulting from historic discrimination. If that distrust persists, then programs like the Section 2501 program will never fully be able to bridge gaps in access and quality of services. Additionally, more must be done to increase the accountability, transparency and enforcement of a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination in the administration of federal programs.

Barriers for Low-Capacity Organizations

Just as beginning and aspiring farmers face unique challenges, so too do many of the organizations that serve those farmers and communities. This can true in both rural and urban areas, and can be especially acute for organizations that lack non-profit status, which in many cases prohibits them from even applying for many federal grant programs. There are many unincorporated community-based groups that are committed to farm viability and increasing food access to marginalized individuals — in particular people of color and low-income individuals in urban areas.

Qiana Mickie, Executive Director of the a NYC-based non-profit and NSAC member organization Just Food, talked to NSAC about the struggles urban farms or farm organizations without nonprofit status face:

“[These organizations] are unable to access funding, and so cannot fund or sustain themselves financially. These same organizations, however, are also the ones doing incredibly valuable work in the community. We face persistent challenges that are rooted in systemic inequity. That [inequity] looks like land displacement, unfair/illegal labor practices, economic/wealth disparities, and the devaluing of community-based work. More concretely, this leads to under-resourced grassroots organizations trying to meet their issue, and have an impact in their communities.”

As the Executive Director of Just Food, an NYC-based food justice and food access non-profit and NSAC member, Mickie is acutely familiar of these challenges on the organizational level, as well as being informed by their network of CSAs, community-run farmers markets, and small-mid scale sustainable rural and urban farmer partners. Even organizations like Just Food that have nonprofit status can still struggle with the federal grant process. According to Mickie, Just Food has actually had to pass on opportunities to apply for a CFP grant, even though CFP would greatly benefit Just Food’s grassroots capacity building efforts.

“There are multiple times in which we have had to pass on applying for federal grants even though we were eligible and the funding would have helped tremendously,” said Mickie. “Many times it came down to capacity. We simply couldn’t apply. I had to decide between applying for the grant; a process that looks like balancing the metrics and grant application requirements, RFA (Request for Applications) window, and deciding how to devote the time, as opposed to direct programming and other fundraising. I know I am not alone. I have heard from other urban based agriculture leaders around the country that also felt that the application barriers were too high to access these critical USDA grants. It is an even harder decision for the leaders that run community-based groups that are volunteer-led or do not have dedicated paid staff.”

Mickie also noted that many federal grants include requirements for organizations to provide matching funds, something that often discourages otherwise qualified lower-resourced organizations from applying.

Structural Challenges Require Structural Changes

Many NSAC member groups have experienced similar challenges to the ones outlined in this post, challenges which USDA can and should address through concerted and intentional policy change. The administrative burden placed upon both farmers and organizations in accessing federal resources is also an issue. This burden oftentimes leads to very qualified organizations that provide crucial services being overlooked or boxed out of federal resource and training opportunities. In order to avoid further marginalizing these already underserved farmers and communities, we – both public and private institutions – must make structural changes to the way we approach and conduct policy work and programming.

In our final post in this series, we will dive into some of the structural changes that would be needed to address these longstanding barriers and begin to dismantle historic discrimination and institutional racism in our food and farm systems.

For more information on racism in the U.S. food system, we strongly encourage folks to read An Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism Present in the U.S. Food System. This amazing resource, created by Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems, is a compilation of essays, writing, and media on structural racism in the food system, ranging from agricultural guestworker programs to land use policy.

The post Racial Equity in the Farm Bill: Barriers for Farmers of Color appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

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