By Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad

According to Josephine Bennett of Georgia Public Broadcasting in an article
entitled “Young Farmer Numbers Declining” she states, “Between 2002 and
2007 farmers age 25 and younger fell nearly 40-percent” in Georgia. Young
people who want to farm are complaining that “Your fertilizer and seed and
equipment are just astronomical for what your return is.” Bankers are
reluctant to lend them money and the cost of land is too high.

In the past young farmers could rely on the USDA loan programs or their local
banks to finance the purchase of their parents’ farm as they retired from
farming. This would give the elderly couple money for their retirement while
passing the farm on seamlessly to their children without having inheritance
taxes taken out of their estate if they waited until their death. However, such
loan money has dried up and many young farm children leave their childhood farm
for college and never return.

And for those who decide to make a go at farming, the labor availability to
do the hard field work has been severely shrunken by the attack on “illegal
aliens”. The Southeast Farm Press reports that studies and surveys confirm
that Georgia farmers are loosing their labor force because of immigration
legislation. Since the implementation of Georgia House Bill 87 in July of 2011
the Georgia Agribusiness Council (GAC) reported that 46 percent of the 130
employers from 61 counties were experiencing a labor shortage. Similar
immigration laws were passed this year in Alabama and Arizona with the same
negative effect on the availability of farm labor especially during the peek
harvesting period for fruits and vegetables. Farmers found it difficult to
replace the immigrant workers with local unemployed labor because of the “physical
demands of the job.”

It is most interesting to note that it was under the Republican
Administration of Ronald Reagan that launched the Uruguay Round of multilateral
trade negotiations in 1986 that lowered global tariffs and created the World
Trade Organization. Two years later his administration won approval of the
US-Canada Free Trade Agreement. Under his Immigration Reform and Control Act,
2.8 million undocumented workers were legalized and more immigrants legally
entered the United States than under any previous president since Teddy
Roosevelt. Political analysts argue that the purpose of Reagan’s free trade
and increased immigration strategy was to break the power of the unions which
was one of his campaign promises. This cheap foreign labor was also designed to
compete with Black labor to break the rise of Blacks into the middle-class.

It is also most interesting that it was Reagan in 1986 that eliminated the
Civil Rights Division of the USDA which allowed thousands of unanswered
complaints of Black farmers against local USDA employees discriminating against
them in program payments and loan programs. So while Reagan was making it easier
for big white farmers to get cheap labor to compete with the Black farmers, he
was also turning his back on Black farmers as their land was being taken from
them by these same white farmers. So now the proverbial “chickens have come
home to roost” and the crops are rotting in the fields because of the
Republican’s reverse stand on immigration and the young white farmers are now
refusing to take up their parents’ careers.

On December 3^rd my wife and I attended a seminar at Tuskegee
University called “Successful Marketing Opportunities for Historically
Disadvantaged Farmers”. We have attended many “marketing” seminars before
where USDA and college professors talked about preparing to enter the commercial
and global markets, but this is the first time that actual buyers have come and
taken the lead. It was the buyers who led many of the break-out sessions and
pleaded with Black farmers to make a commitment this year to produce a variety
of vegetables for their markets. Buyers included Walmart, Whole Foods, CH
Robinson Worldwide, Inc. and Sodexo. For years I have been a part of a Southern
Georgia vegetable coop where we were trying to get into Walmart, Harvey’s,
Winn-Dixie, Kroger and other grocery chains with no success. Now the big ones
were courting us, why? Oh, they need us now because young white kids are not
going into farming and the big white farmers don’t have the labor to grow and
pick fruits and vegetables. It is also interesting that Walmart admitted that
they started courting Black farmers in Alabama in February of this year. Hum,
what happened in February? Oh, Minister Farrakhan’s Saviours’ Day Address
where he stressed that it was time for us to separate, get farm land and do for
self.

On top of this the crops that these companies kept emphasizing for us to grow
were field peas and collard greens. This was a clue that they wanted to expand
their Black customer base by offering traditional slave – I mean soul food
items in their stores in the South.

We are advocating for Black farmers to come out of hiding and take advantage
of these opportunities. Of course Black farmers, like anyone going into any type
of business relationship, should ask all the right questions. Prenuptial
agreements may apply.(smile)

We encourage more young Blacks to look at farming or other agribusiness
careers, because the tide is changing. However, we in the Ministry of
Agriculture are still pushing to establish our own line of cooperatively owned
grocery stores in the Black communities, because as fast as the big boys can
court you, they can dump you when they get a cheaper supplier. We also must
remember history as described in The Secret Relationship Between Blacks
and Jews, Volume 2. A relationship where the purchaser of agricultural
products also reaches out to help the small farmer by lending him money to
purchase the inputs for his operation, could turn into a predatory sharecropping
relationship where the big boys get their shelves and pockets filled while the
little man goes further in debt. Plus we want to teach our people “How to Eat
to Live” and supply them with the best of foods and not the old slave
plantation varieties. Now of course field peas and collard greens without pork
may be better for them than the artificial chemicals in the junk foods,
processed foods and fast foods.