Sep 5, 2024
Young Farmers respond to USDA discrimination financial payments
National Young Farmers Coalition is reacting to USDA discrimination financial payments.
In July 2023, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) opened the claims process for the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program (DFAP), authorized by section 22007 of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Through the IRA, Congress appropriated $2.2 billion in financial assistance for farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners who experienced discrimination in USDA’s farm lending programs prior to January 2021.
The application period for the program closed in early 2024. On Aug. 1, USDA wrapped up the time-bound program by issuing more than 43,000 payments to applicants across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.
“This is a welcome development in this administration’s efforts to advance racial equity across the federal government, and as USDA Secretary Vilsack responded to the announcement, ‘This is one of many steps taken at USDA to begin the process of writing a new narrative about the department’,” National Young Farmers stated in a news release.
“Today marks an important milestone for USDA and for our collective efforts to hold the Department accountable in addressing a history of acts of discrimination against perpetually marginalized agricultural producers and their communities,” Michelle Hughes, Young Farmers’ co-executive director said in the release. “We appreciate the thoughtfulness and attention to detail that USDA applied to this process, and are eager to see more data as it becomes available on how these assistance payments were calculated.
“This is also a moment to celebrate that the USDA cooperator organizations, including Young Farmers, that have worked to ensure our communities apply for programs like the Coronavirus Financial Assistance Program, the Land, Capital, and Market Access Program, and the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program, have formed a trusted ecosystem of service providers that serve as the bridge between farmers and USDA programming.”
In 2023, Young Farmers joined other grassroots organizations that were selected by USDA as DFAP cooperators and conducted outreach and provided information and technical assistance to potential applicants.
“We recognized that while this program was not everything we would hope for, it was a critical opportunity for farmers and ranchers who had experienced discrimination in USDA’s farm lending programs prior to January 1, 2021, to be heard and to potentially receive financial assistance in recognition of the impacts of those experiences,” Ebonee Stevenson, Young Farmers’ USDA access and accountability organizer, said in the release.
To help spread the word and support the best possible outcome for this program, Young Farmers made more than 1,300 calls to farmers; hosted several social media educational events, including collaborations with Farmers Legal Action Group, Rural Coalition, and other DFAP cooperators; published several blog posts and announcements; created a Youtube playlist of the DFAP info sessions; passed out flyers at local farmer and community events; and referred over 400 farmers to apply for DFAP.
There are two main groups of recipients. The first group includes over 23,000 individuals who have or had a farming or ranching operation, and will be receiving between $10,000 and $500,000 of assistance. Nationally, the average payment size for this group is nearly $82,000.
The second group of recipients includes more than 20,000 individuals who planned to have a farming or ranching operation, but reported that they were unable to do so because they couldn’t get a USDA loan. These individuals are receiving between $3,500 and $6,000 of assistance, with an average payment of $5,000.
Based in Hudson, New York, the National Young Farmers Coalition (Young Farmers) is a national grassroots network of young farmers working to change policy and shifting power to equitably resource the new generation of working farmers.
