How Racism In Agriculture Built America's Food Apartheid

Forbes

29-04-2025

(Part of the series Vanilla is Black)
The Trump administration's proposed budget would slash billions from the USDA. Nutrition, rural development, and food programs face steep cuts, threatening efforts like the Illinois Grocery Initiative, which supports independent grocery stores and cooperatives in underserved areas. While many farmers will be hit hard, Black farmers may barely notice. They were never part of the safety net.
Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains, Greene County, Ga. Artist Jack Delano. (Photo by ... More Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
For generations, Black farmers have been left out of subsidies, loans, and access to land. The USDA didn't serve Black farmers; at best, it neglected them at worst, it pushed them out. Only 1.4% of U.S. farmers today are Black. In 1920, it was 14%. In Ohio, it's less than 1%. From 16 million acres owned by Black families, we're now down to scraps. (Source: USDA Census of Agriculture)
'We're Not Allowed to Farm Anymore'
I FIRST met a Black farmer in the basement of the Ohio State Capitol, in 2012. He was there to lobby. We ran into each other near the giant mosaic map of Ohio on the ground floor of the statehouse. What he said stuck with me: 'Black folks aren't allowed to farm anymore.' That feels true in state like Ohio where less than 1% of farmers are Black. That is just bonkers! Later, when Planet Money traced the life of a T-shirt, from cotton field to factory to store, I noticed something. There wasn't a single Black voice in the story. Black folks weren't in a story that began in Mississippi about cotton, of all things! It's not like they were left out of the story. Historically, aside from picking it, Black folks haven't been allowed in the cotton business.
The USDA, banks, and courts helped push Black farmers off their land. Some were denied loans. Others were burned out, cheated, or chased away.
Anton Seals Jr., is doing something about that. Anton is objectively one of the leaders of the urban food and land movement. He's on the board of the Trust for Public Land. He leads Grow Greater Englewood, in Chicago. He's also been my friend since the third grade. His work has had an outsized influence on me and my reporting career. Anton says the recent USDA chaos isn't about food deserts. 'It's food apartheid,' he told me. 'Because deserts are natural. Apartheid is planned.'
Trump's USDA Cuts Threaten Local Grocery Access
Anton helped shape the $20 million Illinois Grocery Initiative. The program, launched by Governor J.B. Pritzker in 2023, supports independent grocery stores and cooperatives through grants, infrastructure, and technical assistance. It aims to bring fresh food access to underserved Black and brown neighborhoods across the state. President Trump's proposed USDA cuts would jeopardize this initiative and similar programs designed to bring fresh food to local communities. That includes funding for SNAP and school meals. Illinois pantries were left scrambling when the administration pulled reimbursements to farmers supplying fresh food to food banks. (Source: ABC7 Chicago)
Anton doesn't hold back. 'We had over a million Black farmers in 1910. Now we have 20,000. That's not a decline. That's theft.' He's critical of how federal money to end food deserts has been distributed. 'Those subsidies still went to box stores. And once the money ran out, they left again. No infrastructure. No lasting impact.'
He says the structure remains broken. 'We've never built a pipeline from Black farmers to Black communities. The food might show up, but it doesn't build our businesses or our power.'
Anton says in many ways the problems of the inner cities are the problems of Black farmers, 'this isn't just about food. It's about control. It's about who gets to feed who. And who gets fed lies.' He added, "We are not disconnected from the food system, we've been deliberately cut off from it."
Karen Washington sees it the same way. She grew up in the Jacob Riis Houses in New York. Her parents worked in food. She became a physical therapist. But her patients kept getting sicker. So she started asking her patients questions, and they remembered gardens, fruit stands, the watermelon man, and home-cooked meals.
A vegetable garden planted by the nonprofit Detroit organization Urban Farming begins to take shape ... More on abandoned lots in an area of Detroit that was the epicenter of the 1967 riots that destroyed much of the city's downtown. (Photo by James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images)
She saw the pattern: the food system isn't broken. It works exactly as it was designed, to exclude. Karen started gardens. Farmers markets. She co-founded the Black Farmer Fund. Like Anton, she's not focused on nostalgia. 'This isn't about fixing a broken food system. It's about shifting power.' Washington says she's come to realize that helping to repair a broken food system is human rights work, 'if you help the bottom rung of people, everybody prospers. What I'm trying to do is to help people understand their power.'
During the Great Migration, Black families fled terror and lost land. They moved into cities. Into redlined neighborhoods. Into jobs with no path to ownership.
'We've never built a pipeline from Black farmers to Black communities. The food might show up, but it doesn't build our businesses or our power.' Anton Seals, Grow Greater Englewood
Still, they built what they could. Churches sold chicken dinners to keep the lights on. Fish shacks paid for college. Rib joints got people through school. Women ran ghost kitchens out of their homes. These weren't just hustles. They were strategy. Ayana Contreras writes in her book "Energy Never Dies" how fish fry joints, BBQ shacks, and church kitchens were more than places for food. They were places where Black Southerners rebuilt their culture and created wealth, which they then used to fund civil rights and political movements.
Robert Binion, center, a peach and watermelon farmer from Clanton, Ala., speaks at the microphone as ... More a small group of black farmers rally at the Agriculture Department in Washington to urge settlement of a class-action lawsuit alleging discrimination, Monday, Feb. 15, 2010. John W. Boyd Jr., third from left, a farmer from Baskerville, Va., and founder of the National Black Farmers Association, says black farmers have been systematically denied loans and treated unfairly by the Department of Agriculture for years. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
I think a lot about the civil rights leader John Mack and an interview I did with him. It was a basic message. Land. Food. Housing. Access. If we want to fix the economy, that's where we start.
Anton said it best: "You want a resilient Black economy? Start with who controls the land, who feeds the people, and who owns the stores. If we don't control any of those things, then what are we really building?" That's a question Black people should be asking themselves in this moment.
This is part of my upcoming book, Blackenomics, about how racism hurts the economy and how ending racism benefits everyone financially. Click here to support independent journalism.