Something's Rotten At USDA--The "Last Plantation's" Ongoing Civil Rights Abuses

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Agricultural Hitman

USDA Civil Rights Abuses

 

 

Something’s Rotten in the Land of Cotton-and in the USDA Too

ARCHIVE :: Monday, November 19, 2007 :: monica davis

By Monica Davis - Many farm families are close to homeless. Having lost their land in crooked foreclosures, they depend on the charity of relatives and some are actually homeless. They have no permanent place to lay their heads, and that is the greatest tragedy of all.

 

Evansville, IN – infoZine - Racism continues to divide the farm community and many white farmers in financial difficulties remain outraged over the entire idea of a “Black Farm Settlement.” Misinformation and disinformation as to what the settlement really is, why it was devised and its true affect on black farmers continues to add fuel to the fire.

Hence, racist claims that blacks took Uncle Sam to the cleaners with the “Black Farm Settlement” resonate with white farmers who have either lost their land, or are in danger of doing so. White farmers, who have allegedly had the power of the farm loan bureaucracy at their backs, often complain that black farmers and con artists are ripping Uncle Sam off with phony ‘black farm claims.’ And black farmers, who are being driven out of business faster than a crooked loan agent can forge a set of loan papers, say many of their white neighbors are co-conspirators, who use contacts inside local loan and land offices to steal their land.

Both are telling the truth, and the truth is a horrible tale indeed. Black farm families, whose ancestors and kin were burned out, lynched and driven out of farming by racist bankers, real estate developers, noose slinging farm loan agents and pistol-packing thugs, say their claims are anything but phony. They point to the 90% decline in black farmers in the past 90 years and say “Something is rotten in the land of cotton,” particularly inside the Farm Services Agency (FSA).

Family farmers as a whole are under pressure from institutions, which are biased in favor of large scale farms. Add crooked land developers, corrupt federal farm loan officers and race-based land theft to the mix and you a multi-billion dollar land swindle, often at the expense of the American tax payer.

Many farmers say federal loan officials are more interested in driving family farmers, minority and white, out of business. Why? Because federal farm loan officers receive massive bonuses for “clearing bankruptcies”, the same bankruptcies that many family farmers say the loan officers helped cause in the first place.

Farmers of all ethnic backgrounds say the bureaucrats have an interest in driving them out of business because loan officers are rewarded “for clearing bankruptcies” of the very farmers whose loan portfolios they supervise. That being said, however, there is a major difference in how black farmers are treated.

Black farmers in some parts of the country have lost 90% of their farm assets in the past 25 years. Why? Because billions of dollars in land owned by blacks continues to be illegally acquired by whites, often with the aid of insiders inside local FSA offices and banks. According to the Environmental Working Group:

Though many causes contribute to the decline of the African American farmer, the racial disparity is unmistakable. Institutionalized racism within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) played a major part in this phenomenon. Indeed, the USDA Commission on Small Farms admitted that “[t]he history of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture … is well documented,” finding that “indifference and blatant discrimination experienced by minority farmers in their interactions with USDA programs and staff … has been a contributing factor to the dramatic decline of Black farmers over the last several decades” (NCSF 1998).

However, as we said before, farm program corruption is not limited to institutional racism, although bias has been the hallmark of USDA’s relationship with black, minority and female farmers. The corruption inside our taxpayer-funded federal farm loan programs include fraud, land theft and feuds based on family feuds, racketeering, and local disagreements.

The very idea that a black farmer, a female farmer, or a farmer of color could dare come in and apply for a loan “the same as a white man” stuck in the craw of many “loan officers”, who often used their authority as loan officers to drive blacks and minorities out of farming, and who, according to many farmers today, continue this same path of institutional lynching. 

Insiders are also are reportedly conducting family and personal feuds, using the might of the federal farm loan program against their personal enemies.

The county loan committee, which decides who does and does not receive farm loans, is often comprised of the same people whose ancestors hated blacks, and who now are often on hostile terms with many of their family members and neighbors who are farmers, as well. Blatant cases of document manipulation, forgery, fraud and collusion inside the farm loan agencies and local banking establishment has resulted in billions of dollars in farm assets being illegally sold, often at rigged auctions.

Family farmers from across the country have reams of paper documenting land theft, fraud and racketeering, but the situation remains highly charged on the issue of race. The whites are angry that the black farmers seem to be getting all of the attention; the blacks are angry that the government settlement neither covered their actual losses, or rid the federal farm loan programs of institutional racism.

The so-called “Black Farmer Settlement” was no help to thousands of black families, because their land was stolen by private parties, who often work in tandem with local bankers, real estate brokers and county land title clerks. For example, a black family in Arkansas continues to deal with land theft, where insiders manipulate deeds, use the Probate Court as their personal pirate, and counterfeit property transfers faster than a two dollar whore can sell tail on payday.

Another family in Mississippi has an ongoing battle to recover land stolen from their mother nearly 40 years ago. An influencial white landowner allegedly paid the stepbrother of the legal owner to sign a paper saying he had sold the land. The problem: the stepbrother had no legal claim to the land he “sold”. 

As was the case in many alleged sales of farms by blacks to whites, the sale was bogus, tainted with fraud and illegality. The white land pirate who continues farming on stolen ground today has made millions of dollars in income on stolen land, and is now reportedly trying to sell the land to real estate investors for a housing development.

Illegal land sales, land theft, loan bias, document forgery, collusion and conspiracy continue to drive farmers out of business. Black farmers and white farmers are still losing billions of dollars in farm land, because of crooked land deals and insider collusion. Conspiracies which often involve county real estate agents, federal farm loan officials, bankers, deed recorders, and, in some cases, county judges and the victims’ own family members, are enriching insiders at the expense of the taxpayers.