President Grover Cleveland Signed Black Farmer's Land Title In 1889 {Pictures]

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives fights for Black lands, agriculture, and equal justice

The 2015 US Food Sovereignty Prize was awarded on October 14 in Des Moines, Iowa. This year, one of the two winners is the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a network of cooperatives, almost all of them comprised of Black family farmers, across the deep South. The Federation upholds a vision of local production for local consumption, and of defense of their family land needed for that local production.The second winner, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras, has a similar mission and values.

Some of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives farmers continue working land that was deeded to their ancestors by the US government after they were freed from slavery. This is the case with Ben Burkett, president of Federation member organization Mississippi Association of Cooperatives. He farms the 164 acres that his great-grandfather was given by the government in 1889. Burkett still has the land title signed by President Grover Cleveland.

Composed of 35 agricultural co-ops, representing 12,000 farm families in 13 states from Texas to North Carolina – primarily African-American, but also some Latino, Native American, and white – the Federation employs organizing, political advocacy, and legal strategies to defend land. The Federation also helps develop economically self-sufficient communities, assisting member co-ops to purchase supplies and find marketing outlets. Moreover, the Federation offers financial and technical assistance.  

The Federation’s work to keep land in the hands of the small farmers is one of the foundations of food sovereignty, a framework of policies, principles and practices through which food systems are controlled by, and serve the best interest of, people instead of corporations.

Taking on the “Last Plantation”  

In 1920, one in every seven farmers in the US was African-American. Together, they owned nearly 15 million acres. By 1982, however, African-American farmers numbered one in 67, together owning only 3.1 million acres. 1 Racism, violence, and massive migration from the rural South to the industrialized North caused a steady decline in the number of Black farmers

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