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AdvertisementAgriculture: White as the snow, but are we as pure?Editor's note: Ken Root is on vacation this week. This column originally printed in Feb. 2006. There are no black farmers left in Iowa. There have been few for decades, but the trend line has finally reached zero. The mostly unstated goals of all parties were accomplished: Whites expanded acreage and blacks left an undesirable place. excellence My intent is not to defame any race but only to bring realization that a milestone was crossed, sometime in the past 10 years, that we must acknowledge if we are to truly know our ancestry and ourselves. Perhaps we are amending for past sins yet not realizing current transgressions. The impetus for this story came from the president's 2007 budget for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It had cuts in many areas but an increase in funding for the now-vacant Office of Civil Rights. Both senators from Iowa supported the funding increase, saying that it was necessary to bring closure to discrimination against black farmers and black employees of the USDA. I asked Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, if he knew a black farmer in Iowa. Surprised, but analytical, he began to try to think of one. "I can't say that I know one, but there was an older gentleman from Fayette County that I met in the 1980s, and he was old then so he must be gone by now." Sen. Tom Harkin, D-IA, when asked the same question, said: "There surely are black farmers in the state. I know there are." He went on to say that there was an increase in Hispanic farmers. "And we welcome that." I'm defining a black farmer as African-American and deriving the majority of his living from traditional crop production from owned or rented land. The 2002 Iowa agricultural census showed 60,000 farmers classified as white and 31 as black and over 350 as Hispanic. The fact is that black farmers, even the grower mentioned by Senator Grassley, fell off the radar a long time ago. Still the senators just assume they are out there and that constituency has not gone extinct. There is no doubt that black farmers have been discriminated against in any region where their land was coveted or their color was resented. The southern states utilized the county ASCS (now Farm Service Agency) committees to delay loans and other actions so that the minority farmers were placed in economic hardship. Midwestern farmers and USDA administrators may not have been as blatant in their actions, but business was business and the small, weak and undesirable of any race were eliminated. From the perspective of a black man born into a farm community, life was difficult. Until the 1970s, written and unwritten rules controlled where he could be, how he could act and what he was paid for his products or charged at the local grocery store. The goal for most was to get away from economic and social segregation and to get to a place where their labor was fairly compensated and their citizenship was equal. Those of us who grew up in farming communities with a black population could see the inequities, but felt helpless to set things right. In Oklahoma, in early summer, there was more work than a farm family could do. Wheat had to be harvested and hay had to be cut, baled and hauled to the barns. We looked for harvest and hay hauling crews and often hired a black family to do the latter. My mother was always conscious of the community's social structure, more for the sake of the Negro workers than to bolster our lower middle-class status. She would feed the white hired hands first and then quickly clear and clean the table and signal to the black crew that it was time for lunch. As a small child, I can remember that they got out of the truck in an orderly fashion, washed themselves carefully with soap at the hand-pumped well, rinsed, then dried with the towel we had provided. When they came into the house they sat and took on a prayerful countenance as the elder gave elegant thanks to God. They ate with manners we didn't see in the white workers, then thanked my mother and returned to the field. I always wondered why these people were demeaned and considered less than human in our community. We paid the same wages to all workers when the day was done and the hay placed in the barn. Still, I could see uneasiness in their eyes, and as I grew up and attended an integrated school, their desire to get away from anything that had to do with farming. Now, almost 50 years later, at least in Iowa, the goal has been accomplished. Opportunity has been color blind for the last 30 years and anyone who worked to obtain a job in the private sector or rank in the military could do so. But agriculture was not where the black man saw his future. Farms and livestock operations expanded and mechanized to counter the loss of workers, but the endemic desire for cheap labor to do the undesirable jobs remains. Who would fill the void left by the black worker? Where could we find another culture that was easy to manipulate and disadvantage? We turned south and brought in Mexicans and Hispanics. Agriculture and agribusiness seem to have no feeling for those who can be used to do the hardest jobs, accept low wages and live as second-class citizens, or even hide as aliens, just for the chance to make money to send home to starving families. We are just as eager to exploit them as the black workers who came before. The cycle continues. Editor's Note: This is Ken Root's 35th year as an agricultural reporter. He grew up on a small farm in central Oklahoma and started his career as a vocational agriculture teacher. He worked in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri as a broadcaster and was the original host of AgriTalk. He has also been the executive director of the National AgriChemical Retailers Association in Washington, D.C. and the National Association of Farm Broadcasters in Kansas City. Ken is now the lead farm broadcaster at WHO and WMT Radio based in Des Moines, Iowa. He has been a columnist for HPJ and Midwest Ag Journal for eight years. Advertisement
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