The USDA has announced their multi-billion-dollar Pandemic Assistance for Producers, which aims to fill in gaps from CFAP. The new effort puts at least $6 billion into new programs to reach a broader set of producers than earlier efforts, including small and minority, specialty crop and organic producers.

$5 billion would go to farmers of color, who have lost 90 percent of their land over the past century because of systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt

Saldana's assertion that denying farmworkers overtime pay was grounded in racism comes as lawmakers consider whether to intervene and shield agricultural employers from backpay lawsuits, suits that farm groups warn pose existential threats to some producers.

Award-winning, conservation-minded landowners will soon be sharing their knowledge by serving as mentors for historically underserved farmers and ranchers.

“Washington is seen as a great agriculture state, and it is, but that industry is dominated by white farmers and ranchers. Only about 90 of the state’s 63,000 or so producers are Black, while fewer than 1 percent are American Indian or Alaska Native, 1.37 percent are Asian, and 4.66 percent are Latinx. 97 percent of our producers are white."

“The reality is there are inherent, legacy barriers and practices that have prevented black farmers and other producers from getting access to programs, and I will do everything I can to remove those barriers,” Vilsack said in an email to The Associated Press.

President Joe Biden’s nomination of Tom Vilsack to lead the Agriculture Department is getting a chilly reaction from many Black farmers who contend he didn’t do enough to help them the last time he had the job.

Racial inequities in the allocation of farm aid is not a new or unusual issue. The unequal administration of pandemic support is part of a much longer trend of government programs underserving minority populations.

The next generation of farmers in the United States might not be whom we expect. If the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the importance of farmworkers in our food system, the story left out a rising class of farmworkers who now own their craft with the help of incubator programs across the country. Latinx

Black farmers expecting change under Biden administrationLoading the player...Sedrick Rowe was a runningback for Fort Valley State University in Georgia and discovered an organic farm on the grounds …