The USDA's Hidden Gatekeepers Have Robbed Black Farmers of $20 Billion In Loans, Land, and Livelihoods for Nearly a Century

For generations, Black farmers in America have faced a quiet but devastating force working against them: the USDA's county committee system. Hidden from public view and rooted in the discriminatory foundations of the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, these committees hold enormous power over who gets loans, disaster assistance, and access to federal programs, and they have long used that power to exclude Black farmers.

Shirley Sherrod, a civil rights activist and former USDA employee, knows this intimately. Her father was denied a loan to build a brick house simply because he was Black, "even though all of the white farmers were getting [the loans],"  and was later shot and killed by a white farmer. Decades later, Sherrod herself was told by a county official that her husband would get an emergency loan "over my dead body." These are not isolated incidents.

The numbers confirm the scale of the problem. In 2024, only 8% of eligible voters cast ballots in county committee elections,  yet the barriers for Black farmers are even steeper. Of roughly 3,600 candidates who ran for seats, only 201 were Black. As Sherrod explains, "You run, and then you don't win. There are people who can determine whether you get a loan... so you get tired and just try to exist."

The consequences are real and immediate. Committee members act as gatekeepers over farmers' financial lives, with power to approve or deny disaster payments, influence hiring decisions, and control outreach. As fourth-generation farmer Patrick Brown puts it: "There may be a little bit too much power there." And that power is routinely abused,  documented cases show qualified Black candidates being passed over for jobs, election results being challenged after Black wins, and ballots mysteriously going missing.

Harvard researcher Trevor Findley cuts to the heart of it: "Going back to the first Farm Bill, all of the benefits flowed to the landowner, and that largely remains the case today."

Link: Capital B News