National Black Farmers Association Opposes Feenstra and Hartzler Amendments Providing for Reconciliation Pursuant to S. Con. Res. 5, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2021
February 10, 2021- For Immediate Release
The following is the official statement of John Boyd, President and Founder of the National Black Farmers Association, on the Freenstra and Hartzler Amendments before the House Agriculture Committee today:
“The National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) strongly opposes the Feenstra and Hartzler Amendments as submitted and to be voted upon today at 2 pm by the US House Agriculture Committee.
The budget reconciliation bill would eliminate all farm program debt held by Black, Native American and other socially disadvantaged farmers.
Representative Randy Feenstra (R-IA) has filed an amendment to reduce the amount of debt forgiveness from 120% of debt (which was included by Chairman Scott to account for the tax consequences of debt relief) to 100%. What many may fail to realize is that cancellation of debt can create other problems and issues. Forgiveness of a debt can be a tax event for the farmers leaving them to bear the burden of the tax liability.
In addition, Representative Vicki Hartlzer (R-MO) has filed an amendment to dramatically limit the scope of this debt forgiveness to debt incurred during COVID-19. Black Farmers and other socially disadvantaged farmers were already struggling as a result of decades of unfair lending and discrimination practices at the US Department of Agriculture. On July 24, 2018, former President Trump announced his $12 Billion Bailout Subsidy for farmers to offset the financial damage brought down on thousands of farmers like me by the change in tariffs. The President touted this subsidy as a solution to the devastating losses we endured. He pledged that the subsidy would be available swiftly and in two installments to farmers. President Trump’s trade policies were a disaster for soybean farmers like me.
Because Market Facilitation Payments (MFP) were tied to production, the largest and most successful producers collected the lion’s share of the funding. While some large farmers received nearly $1 million for crops harvested in 2018, most family farmers like me received less than $5,000. According to the Environmental Working Group, the top 10% of MFP recipients received 54% of all MFP payments. Rather than adopt strict payment and income limits, as the Trump Administration proposed for farm subsidies in their FY 2019 and FY 2020 budget requests, the Administration instead chose to apply the same broken rules that have funneled farm subsidies to the biggest farms for decades. Those rules were especially unfair to African American, Latino and Asian American farmers, who tend to have smaller operations than white farmers – and are less likely to be eligible for government farm supports at all. Historically, many black farmers and other small-scale farmers receive payments late, and or for some, never.
We have NO backup support in difficulties such as this time to resolve debt that has incurred prior to COVID-19 and continues to disproportionately force farmers out of business. As Black farmers, we have a long history of being shut out of help from the USDA.
