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The current period of economic and social instability in the farm economy has generated renewed interest in the framing processes used by farmers to interpret and ascribe blame for the distress they have experienced. Studies show that agrarian frames are differentiated into types based on farmers' historical and contemporary racialized experiences. To investigate the role that agrarian frames play in navigating farm stress, we conducted a thematic analysis using data from interviews with 15 Black farmers from three Southern states. The results identify a Black Agrarian frame with two dimensions: traumatic and resilient. The traumatic dimension provides a system-blame narrative that highlights financial risk driven by institutions and racism as a core factor in farm stress. The resilient dimension describes collective action as a key coping strategy linked to understanding the farm as a multi-faceted asset. In conclusion, research on differentiated agrarian frames is an important component towards understanding how diverse populations navigate farm stress and the development of culturally appropriate resources for addressing it.

Black farmers have historically been discriminated against in services from the federal government, including access to credit. Discrimination can take the form of delayed loan processing requests, which can affect timely planting, harvesting, feeding of livestock, and farm performance. This study uses nationwide, farm‐level data from 2009 to 2021 from the Farm Service Agency's direct farm loan program to investigate racial discrimination in the farm loan program. Findings reveal loan processing times average longer for Black borrowers on operating loans, though with a substantial state‐level variation. Specifically, it takes an average of more than two additional days for Black farmers' operating loan applications to be completed and another two additional days to be processed. However, there was no significant difference in time for farm ownership loans suggesting a more nuanced cause than outright racial discrimination. Other factors that increased loan processing time for borrowers included larger loan amounts, more complex loan types, a mix of collateral, and being a new borrower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Zimbabwe, land has always been a visible index of racial domination and oppression. Following independence in 1980, the redistribution of white property to black farmers emerged as one of the most contentious battlegrounds for refiguring citizenship and nationhood. This article explores how white farmers in a small community in western Zimbabwe fought to establish claims to belonging as they faced the threat of imminent land reform at the turn of the millennium. Drawing upon Tania Li’s concept of articulation [2000. “Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot.”Comparative Studies in Society and History42 (1): 149–179], I suggest that farmers constructed themselves both as moral subjects who cared for the environment, and skilled subjects with the technical know-how to safeguard and maximise the country’s resources. In the absence of claims to indigeneity, farmers attempted to offset their own compromised morality by invoking the language of expertise. By examining this intersection between morality and expertise, I argue that white farmers in Zimbabwe brought together logics typically imagined to be distinct as a strategy to claim moral belonging while obscuring the historical and political factors that threatened to void those same claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article looks at the ways that can be used for the radicalization of the rhetoric of food politics in the U.S. as of January 2015. Topics discussed include complications in the service of food justice, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) long-standing discrimination against African American farmers, and racial discrimination against African American farmer.

The article seeks to delineate and evaluate some constraints that the new black farmers in the former white commercial farms face in the backdrop of the contested land reform programme in Zimbabwe. Whereas there was euphoria in the manner the peasants 'occupied' the commercial farms, but the current reality on the ground is pessimistic. The study claims that instead of improving the quality of lives, the new black farmers appear to be literally 'marching forward to the past' in light of the continued challenges. This is how a theology of liberation comes to the fore. Methodologically, the descriptive method used a population sampling of fifty resettled farmers who occupied Congela farm in Kwekwe district. This method was corroborated by the participant observations, questionnaires and interviews as techniques to gather data from the field. This triangulation was necessary to facilitate a holistic picture of resource constraints faced by the resettled black farmers. The study concludes by suggesting some recommendations which might help to promote sustainable development, justice and equality in Zimbabwe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent political transformation in South Africa has laid the basis for significant socioeconomic change. This change has included the enzergence of black commercial farmers. Through a case study of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa (Elliot commercial farming areas), the obstacles and opportunities facing emerging Black commercial farmers were examined. The objective of the paper is to examine the prospects and challenges faced by emerging black commercial farmers in the municipality of Sakhisizwe. To this end, the paper considers the circunzstances of the emerging Black-commercial farmers who benefitted from the local government supportfacility rolled out under the land reform programme. The land reform programme for agricultural development sought to build a class of Black commercial farmers in an attempt to deracialise the agricultural sector and also achieve more comprehensive agrarian reform in rural South Africa. The study established that emerging black commercial farmers in Elliot were engaged in both crop farming and livestock farming. As the paper illustrates, considerable problems confront the agricultural sector. Measures need to be put in place to enhance the existing base and, more importantly, to encourage the participation of this group of farmers given that they had hitherto long been denied access to this primary means of production. The challenges faced by the emerging Black commercialfarmers include lack of marketing opportunities, limited government support and poor networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]