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Any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary accordingly. —Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past, p. 27 On October 13, 1965, the New Farmers of America (NFA) disappeared without a trace. The organization had operationalized one of the largest Black youth farm movements in American history and boasted a membership of over 50,000 Black farm boys studying vocational agriculture in public high schools in 18 states across the South and parts of the East Coast. They were last seen in the shad­ows of the Jim Crow era, participating in the national convention of the majority-white Future Farmers of America (FFA)—now named the National FFA Organization—in Kansas City, Missouri. At the convention, a ceremony took place that symbolized the July 1, 1965, decision to merge the NFA and FFA. But for some, as one former member told me, the “merger” was more like a “hostile takeover.” The “pageantry of the merger,” as Cecil L. Strickland, Sr. (1994, p. 44) described it, required Adolphus Pinson, the NFA’s last president, to surrender the organization’s char­ter to Kenneth Kennedy, the national FFA presi­dent. “I am duly authorized to transfer to you the National NFA Charter, together with the perma­nent record of officers of the organization,” Pinson told Kennedy. “Also, to inform you that the total membership of 50,807 students of vocational agri­culture in 12 states are now active members of the Future Farmers of America” (Strickland, 1994, p. 43). The NFA charter was placed in the national FFA archives along with the minutes of the last NFA convention and important cultural artifacts of the organization, including its banner and flag. The NFA also transferred the US$20,000 in its savings account to the FFA treasury. The final nail in the coffin for the NFA occurred when Pinson took off his NFA jacket and handed it to Kennedy. In return, Kennedy presented Pinson with an FFA jacket, declaring, “The exchanging of this NFA jacket for the FFA jacket by you, the last NFA President, symbolizes the joining together all stu­dents of vocational agriculture into one great organization” (Strickland, 1994, p. 46). And with Kennedy’s final statement, the NFA vanished. . . .

By exploring agricultural education initiatives in South Africa in the period from the 1910s to the 1930s, this article seeks to expand the historiography of both Black internationalism and global progressivism to include Black agrarianism and questions of race from a transatlantic perspective. In their efforts to promote scientific farming, Black progressive farmers in the Eastern Cape reserves made strategic use of the famous educational philosophy of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama as an enabling discourse that allowed them to gain an audience for their specific, localized claims to economic and political participation in a segregationist country. While the existing historiography has discussed Tuskegee's impact in Africa as an example of oppressive labor education, this article argues that Black agrarian progressivism should be taken seriously as a form of antiracism and Pan-Africanism, albeit one that was classist and patriarchal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there are more opportunities and re­vamped avenues for socially disadvantaged farmers to participate in federal agricultural program since Pigford v. Glickman, the first Black farmer class action lawsuit against USDA and subsequent billion dollar settlement, there is not a lot of scholarly research on Black farmers’ perspectives and experiences in accessing and using these programs today. Using data from nine focus groups in Mississippi with 89 Black farmers, we find that Black farmers and ranchers identify several barriers to program participation, namely communication about programs and problems with the application and approval process, including a lack of standardization and transparency. Inter­woven throughout the discussions of barriers were conversations about racial and gender discrimina­tion, with producers soundly in agreement that the former persists, and the latter is an issue. This research informs our understandings of Black farmers’ experiences of how racial hierarchies and networks continue to shape their ability to access and participate in federal farm programs; policy recommendations are provided.

Although there are more opportunities and revamped avenues for socially disadvantaged farmers to participate in federal agricultural program since Pigford v. Glickman, the first Black farmer class action lawsuit against USDA and subsequent billion dollar settlement, there is not a lot of scholarly research on Black farmers' perspectives and experiences in accessing and using these programs today. Using data from nine focus groups in Mississippi with 89 Black farmers, we find that Black farmers and ranchers identify several barriers to program participation, namely communication about programs and problems with the application and approval process, including a lack of standardization and transparency. Inter-woven throughout the discussions of barriers were conversations about racial and gender discrimination, with producers soundly in agreement that the former persists, and the latter is an issue. This research informs our understandings of Black farmers' experiences of how racial hierarchies and networks continue to shape their ability to access and participate in federal farm programs; policy recommendations are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First paragraphs: In 1962, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer traveled to the county seat in Indianola, Mississippi, in order to register to vote. This wasn’t her first time and it wouldn’t be the last. Although she had been warned with threats of violence and threats of death, she was determined to continue until she was able to exercise her right to participate in electoral politics. Upon her return to the Marlow Plantation, the plantation owner, W.D., confronted her. She had been a dedicated employee for 18 years as a share­cropper, time- and recordkeeper, cook, and domes­tic. He told her to withdraw her application for voter registration or leave. Her home, as paltry as it was, was a condition of her employment and that of her husband, Pap. Like many African Ameri­cans, she faced homelessness and joblessness as the price of political participation. She must have feared with good reason that she would be lynched...

Abstract: Agrarianism is important in the American mythos. Land represents both a set of values and a store of wealth. In this article, we ask how land matters in the lives of rural, southern, Black farmland owners. Drawing on 34 interviews, we argue that, since the end of slavery, land has continued to operate as a site of racialized exclusion. Local white elites limit Black farmers’ access to landownership through discriminatory lending practices. At the same time, Black farmland owners articulate an ethos in which land is a source of freedom, pride, and belonging. This we term “Black agrarianism.” They cultivate resistance to the legacies of slavery and sharecropping and contemporary practices of social closure. These Black farmland owners, then, view land as protection from white domination. Thus, we demonstrate how landownership is a site for the re‐creation of racial hierarchy in the contemporary period while also offering the potential for resistance and emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blacks have been farming in the USA for about four centuries and in Michigan since the 1830s. Yet, for blacks, owning and retaining farmland has been a continuous challenge. This historical analysis uses environmental justice and food sovereignty frameworks to examine the farming experiences of blacks in the USA generally, and more specifically in Michigan. It analyzes land loss, the precipitous decline in the number of black farmers, and the strategies that blacks have used to counteract these phenomena. The paper shows that the ability of blacks to own and operate farms has been negatively impacted by lack of access to credit, segregation, relegation to marginal and hazard-prone land, natural disasters, organized opposition to black land ownership, and systemic discrimination. The paper examines the use of cooperatives and other community-based organizations to help blacks respond to discrimination and environmental inequalities. The paper assesses how the farming experiences of blacks in Michigan compare to the experiences of black farmers elsewhere. It also explores the connections between Michigan’s black farmers, southern black farmer cooperatives, and Detroit’s black consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First paragraph: Reverend Wendell Paris is currently assistant pastor at the New Hope Baptist Church of Jackson, Mississippi. He and his brother George, and George’s wife Alice, were all activists and organizers in the civil rights movement in Alabama and were early leaders of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC). I was honored to meet him at the FSC training center in Epes, Alabama, and subsequently to interview him. Like his mentor, Fannie Lou Hamer—the legendary civil rights leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party—Rev. Paris is deeply committed both to Black civil rights and to farming as a strategy to freedom....

While researchers have extensively studied the growth in the number of small farms between 1982 and 2012 reported in the Census of Agriculture (COA), there has been little discussion of trends among farm operators who do not sell any agricultural products. Using previously unreleased COA data collected between 1982 and 2012, this research empirically examines these "zero-sales farmers" for the first time. There was a large increase in the number of zero-sales farmers from 104,000 in 1982 to 466,000 in 2012, as well as a remarkable rise in their share of the farming population, from 5 percent in 1982 to 22 percent in 2012. Women and minority farmers were disproportionately likely to be zero-sales operators: at least 30 percent of women, Native American, and black farmers reported no sales in 2012. Older and beginning farmers were also more likely to report zero sales in 2012 than younger and experienced ones, respectively. Zero-sales farmers dramatically influenced recent census data on farm income, farm size, and operator age, among other results, due to their substantial share of the overall population. In order to effectively utilize COA data, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers should include zero-sales farms in their analyses. There are several steps the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can take to make information about zero-sales farmers more readily available and widely understood, such as introducing a zero-sales category in the census results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I focus on the 1908 book Studies in the American Race Problem, a collection of essays by Mississippi planter Alfred Stone and Massachusetts statistician Walter Willcox, in order to examine the ways in which agricultural industrialization was articulated as a racial project in the early 20th century. Notions of development and competition in agriculture were closely tied to plantationist racial conceptions, and Studies in the American Race Problem evidences the articulation of white supremacist racial conceptions with liberal statistical practices which examined race as a population-level phenomenon. This agrarian epistemology, articulated as the interplay of individual racial deficiency and population-level demographics, provides evidence of an anti-Black investment in the notion of industry. Acknowledging anti-Blackness in the very genealogy of agro-industry, I suggest, provides a means to better understand subsequent agricultural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the scholarship on the work and legacy of activist Fannie Lou Hamer concentrates on her tireless efforts for civil/human rights and African American representation and access to electoral politics. This article brings to light an important project she started in 1969, Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC) in Sunflower County, MS. An agricultural cooperative built on 680-acres, Freedom Farms included a pig bank, Head Start program, community gardens, commercial kitchen, a garment factory, sewing cooperative, tool bank, and low-income, affordable housing as strategies to support the needs of African Americans who were fired and evicted for exercising the right to vote. Freedom Farms offered these sharecroppers and tenant farmers educational and re-training opportunities including health care and disaster relief for those who wanted to stay in the Mississippi Delta. Using a historical method to analyze extensive archival records, this article offers an analysis of Freedom Farms and illuminates valuable lessons on agriculture as resistance, and alternative strategies of rebuilding and investing in sustainable communities. Using the principles of collective and shared ownership, Freedom Farms and the work of Ms. Hamer, offer us important and valuable lessons on rebuilding our communities and investing in sustainable cities around growing food. This article outlines some of these lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oakland's Freedom Farmers' Market is more than a venue for food exchange; it is a gathering place for Black cultural expression and economics. More often than not, Black farmers are shut out and even pushed out of mainstream farmers markets. However, fresh food and Black farmers are celebrated at the Freedom Farmers' Market each week. This commentary discusses the critical ways in which this market represents a social discourse about decolonizing our food system. Embedded within this place analysis is also, necessarily, a critique of the dominant places people currently have available for food. The Freedom Farmers' Market has become a model for disenfranchised peoples to take control of their own food system.

Land and agrarian reform has the potential to expand South Africa's rangeland commons and enhance their contribution to the livelihoods of the rural poor, yet to a large extent this has been an opportunity missed. Shifting policy agendas have prioritised private land rights and commercial land uses, seeking to dismantle the racial divide between the white commercial farming areas and the ex-Bantustans by allocating former white farms to black farmers. These agendas and planning models reflect class and gender bias and a poor understanding of common property. If reform policies are to contribute to the reduction of high levels of rural poverty and inequality, then greater recognition of the potential role of livestock production on the commons must inform policy and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]