[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 22644]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      THE PLIGHT OF BLACK FARMERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Clayton) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mrs. CLAYTON. Mr. Speaker, over the last 9 years I have come to this 
floor to talk about the plight of rural America. I have talked about 
farmers, including small farmers, disadvantaged farmers and minority 
farmers.
  Today, I rise again to talk about the plight of the black farmers who 
have suffered a saga of mistreatment, discrimination and benign 
neglect. I would say that both the problems, as well as their 
possibilities, really transcend region, transcend race. It encompasses 
a wide array of individuals that go beyond just black Americans but 
includes Hispanics, includes Asian, includes Indian Americans and women 
as well.
  This issue also affects the disabled. A wheelchair-bound white male 
in Michigan has felt the sting of unfair discriminatory practices on 
the part of the Agriculture Department and contacted the Agriculture 
Department, who are there to serve; and indeed, all who are involved in 
farming as a way of life are affected by the mistreatment and by the 
lost opportunities that the black farmers would have.
  All farmers are affected by changes and forces that have been 
experienced in this new world order or this new economy of the world. 
There are several factors that have caused small farmers to decline or 
to accelerate the decline of these small producers. They include 
globalization of commerce, economies of scale, limited access to 
capital and technological advances. The existence of worldwide markets 
for all commodities, not just agriculture, but all commodities, are 
feeling this, have created unique market forces and pressures that 
producers of the past did not have to compete against.
  American's producers have to cope with the substantially larger and 
less accommodating world market in which to sell their merchandise and 
their commodities, with competitors who play by sometime significantly 
different rules.
  In 1992, when we first started looking at farmers and the demise of 
farmers, we saw the landscape was very different, and we compared the 
landscape as it was in 1920, when we had over 6 million farms in the 
United States. Things have changed obviously. Close to one-sixth of 
those farmers were really in North Carolina; 926,000 small farmers were 
in North Carolina.
  When we looked at it again in 1992, the landscape was very different. 
For only 1 percent of 1.9 million farmers in the United States were 
then operated by African Americans. Since the 2000 census, that decline 
has even gone further. At that time, it was only 18,816 farmers. That 
is a paltry number of African Americans when we consider that we 
represent more than 13 percent of the total population.
  In my home State of North Carolina, there has been a 64 percent 
decline in minority farmers just over the last 15 years, from 6,996 
farms in 1978 to 2,498 farms, again when we measured from this time in 
1992. There are several reasons why a number of minorities and limited 
resource farmers indeed are declining so rapidly, but the one that has 
been documented time and time again is the discrimination in the credit 
extended by the Department of Agriculture, the very agency established 
by the U.S. Government to accommodate and to assist the special needs 
of all farmers and ranchers.
  The issue was first raised in 1968 when the U.S. Commission on Civil 
Rights established that the USDA discriminated both in internal 
employee actions and external program delivery activities. An ensuing 
USDA employee focus group that was established in 1970 again reported 
that USDA was callous in their institutional attitude and demeanor 
regarding civil rights and equal opportunity.
  In 1982, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights examined the issue yet 
again and published the report called The Decline of the Black Farmers 
in America. The Commission concluded that there were widespread 
prejudicial practices in loan approval, loan servicing, farm management 
assistance as administered by then what we used to call the Farmers 
Home Administration.
  However, as no improvement was forthcoming, indeed my friend the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) had a report. I want to tell my 
colleagues that this saga has been going on. In fact, the gentleman 
from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) in his operational committee, as he chaired 
it, had a report and he called it The Minority Farmer: A Disappearing 
Resource. Well, we have an obligation then. We should do better.
  Mr. Speaker, I will be coming to this floor more than once again to 
raise a consciousness that we cannot have this benign neglect, this 
mistreatment and this discrimination.

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