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Home / Business News / Agriculture
Some Black farmers say their needs not being heard or met
Dec. 18, 2022 6:00 am, Updated: Dec. 21, 2022 2:11 pm
An educational webinar focused on using fungi to improve soil health when Ai Wen joined the board of the Iowa Organic Association.
“Here it sounds like a new technique, but when I grew up in China that was part of our agricultural practice,” said Wen, a University of Northern Iowa assistant professor of biology who grew up in Beijing.
Wen was asked to join the 11-person board to fill a spot set aside for an educator, not because she’s Chinese. But she thinks her culture and her experiences being different from other board members makes the group stronger.
The Gazette looked at the boards of 10 agricultural groups at the state and national levels and found, by looking at individual and group photographs, nearly all of the members appear to be white and about three-quarters appear to be men.
The imbalance is troubling to some farmers.
“If Blacks are not at the table, how you could you know what that community needs? Because this has worked for us, it must work for them?” asked Shaffer Ridgeway, a Black vegetable farmer and Black Hawk County-based district conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. “You’ve got to have every community at that table and represented.”
Ridgeway in January will be joining the board of Practical Farmers of Iowa, which, according to its website, now has 14 members, including eight white men, five white women and one Asian-American woman.
Ridgeway doesn’t see any intent to exclude other races when forming agricultural boards. “I really think they just don’t know and most of them don’t talk to anybody who doesn’t look like them,” he said.
As of the 2017 U.S. Agricultural Census, 99.6 percent of Iowa farmers were white. The composition of many agriculture boards reflects that, said Craig Floss, chief executive officer of the Iowa Corn Growers Association. The group’s board has 12 members, including 10 white men and two white women.
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“Farming today in the state of Iowa has been passed from one generation to the next,” Floss said. “We were settled by white Europeans, so consequently, we don’t have a lot of minority farmers who are growing corn.”
The Corn Growers Association has nine crop-reporting districts and members from each group elect leaders who live in each district to serve on the board, Floss said. He offered to reach out to Black corngrowers who might consider joining the association and running for a leadership position.
“Anybody can become a member and you get engaged and you get involved, ”he said.
Joby Young, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, echoed Floss’s statements. The national organization has 31 board members at present, including 28 white men and three white women.
“We’re a grassroots organization of 2,800 county farm bureaus,” he said. “At every level of that network, there are members elected to leadership. Voting members elect the leadership at the state level, including the boards. At the American Farm Bureau convention, voting delegates elect our board members.”
The American Farm Bureau last year signed an agreement with the National Society for Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences with the goal of increasing minority involvement in agriculture. The groups agreed to share written content for each other’s publications, provide leadership training and expertise and cross-promote programs and events, according to a news release.
The American Farm Bureau also tries to amplify the voices of minority farmers, such as Kamal Bell, a North Carolina farmer featured in an August article and video about sustainability.
Groups like the American Farm Bureau and the Iowa Corn Growers Association are heavy hitters when it comes to developing national agriculture policy. The policies and practices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture haven’t always benefited farmers of color the same way as white farmers.
When Congress passed the 2008 Farm Bill, it included $100 million for Black farmers who sued the government alleging the USDA discriminated against them in farm loans between 1981 and 1996. The USDA documented racist policies of denying loans, delaying loans and forcing foreclosures.
In 2010, President Barack Obama approved another $1.15 billion for these claims, the USDA reported.
Payments to Black farmers have been held up in court since 2021 and in October, a class-action lawsuit by Black farmers alleged the U.S. government broke its promise to help Black farmers pay off debts caused by discrimination, the Associated Press reported.
Todd Western III, a Minnesota man who farms 35 acres in Black Hawk County with his mom and brothers, flew to North Carolina in November with his son for Harvest Ball, a gathering of Black farmers from across the country.
“It was so exhilarating to see all those Black farmers,” he said. “It was so awesome to be around each other.”
Darrell Tennie, a Black crop insurance agent in North Carolina, hosted the first-annual Harvest Ball through his nonprofit group Farmers Outreach Solutions. More than 200 people came to the Nov. 4-6 event in Raleigh, and Tennie made sure everyone who wanted to speak about themselves and their farming operation got a chance.
Tennie said state and national agricultural boards also need to be listening to these voices.
“We need to introduce to those boards the opportunities that are there with working with socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers,” he said.
Syngenta, a multinational agricultural chemical and seed company, sponsored the Harvest Ball.
“Minorities have contributed greatly to agriculture and it’s beneficial to any company or industry to include minorities,” said Macie O’Shaughnessy, a Syngenta industry relations manager who attended the event.
There, she connected with Western and they realized they both live in the Twin Cities. They since have gotten together there to talk about ways Syngenta could help support a gathering of Black farmers from the Upper Midwest, she said.
Any Black farmers who want to connect with Western may reach him at toddwestern24@gmail.com.
The Gazette started reporting a series on Black farmers in Iowa in February, continuing with a story in July about mentoring the next generation of Black farmers. This story about lack of diversity on agricultural boards and the package about the Westerns, a Black Iowa family that has owned a farm in Mahaska County for 158 years, wrap up the formal series, but we’re always looking to get to know more farmers of color. If you’d like to share your story, please email Erin Jordan at erin.jordan@thegazette.com.
Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com
Investigative Reporter, The Gazette
Dorothy De Souza Guedes
Mike Hlas
Tom Mazza
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Agriculture boards lack diversity in Iowa, nation – The Gazette
