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Monday, March 21, 2022

Black farmers facing an under-researched mental-health crisis driven by debt, racism, and fear of displacement

Unpredictable natural forces, financial risks, and pure physical exertion make farming one of the most stressful occupations in the nation. "But Black farmers have to contend with an additional menace: the systemic racism that has long marred U.S. agriculture," Safiya Charles reports for The Counter, which defines itself as "a nonprofit, independent, nonpartisan newsroom investigating the forces shaping how and what America eats."

"These producers face down all the typical hardships while also navigating other hazards, including legal battles with the government, discriminatory lenders and opportunistic land grabbers," Charles reports. "These painful interactions tend to underscore the racist—and tragically long-standing—myth that Black people don’t belong in farming, and don’t deserve the tools required to succeed."

Louisiana sugar cane farmer Angie Provost told Charles that many Black farmers, including those in her and her husband's families, "have the same story: sitting there in a USDA office waiting to be serviced, and never being serviced properly; being told by local agents that you will not succeed," said Angie. "'You will fail.' 'You are not a farmer.' Those types of things are told to you directly." Only about 1% of farmers are Black, and advocates blame the declining percentage on decades of loan denials by the Agriculture Department and associated lenders.

"These grinding forms of discrimination take a deeply personal toll, contributing to a mental-health crisis among Black farmers that’s at once acute and yet hard to see," Charles writes. "Help is not exactly on the way. While programs do exist to help farmers handle the stress of the profession, many existing lifelines are geared toward the approximately 95 percent of U.S. farmers who are white, downplaying or outright ignoring the specific forms of distress that stem from race-based prejudice. Though a small but vital body of research points to the need for a more inclusive approach, and at least one advocacy group is working to better understand the scope of the problem, few efforts are being made to address the problem on the ground. For now, too many farmers still have nowhere to turn, their suffering largely rendered invisible within the support systems that exist."

Government programs meant to tackle farming stress don't generally tend to the unique needs of Black farmers. "In 2021, the USDA announced $25 million to state Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Networks to build crisis hotlines, establish anti-suicide trainings, and offer free or low-cost counseling, among other services," Charles reports. "It was an important step toward recognizing the emotionally grueling, often isolating nature of farm work. But it did little to respond to the needs of Black farmers, who tend to operate smaller farms, face increased economic pressure, and are routinely exposed to racism in agriculture and beyond. Of the 50 FRSAN projects USDA funded in 2021, only seven—in Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Rhode Island—pledge to make efforts to accommodate the specific needs of communities of color."

More researchers are beginning to examine racism in farming. "Kentucky State University economist and rural sociologist Marcus Bernard worked with farmers in Alabama’s Black Belt region as the former director of a rural training and research center for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit association of about 20,000 mostly Black farmers and landowners," Charles reports. "While completing his Ph.D. at the University of Kentucky, Bernard examined how racism, institutional racism, and class conflict affected Black male farmers. His research identified high levels of acute stress in both African American men and women farmers," including farm wives.

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