Thus, as with the 1956 Soil Bank Program from which the CRP grew, it is the least productive land and lowest income households that are often enrolled and kept profitable. Second, studies have shown that conservation compliance does not present a strong economic deterrent for landowners who want to crop former CRP acreage after the CRP term is over, thus highlighting the potentially temporary nature of such economic relief. Third, and perhaps most importantly, only lands planted with commodity crops, especially, corn and wheat are eligible for CRP and not fruits or vegetables, or lands used for livestock. Because white farmers have historically owned large-scale grain and oilseed farmland while farmers of color have been relegated to smaller, non-commodity crop farmland, the Conservation Reserve Program potentially undergirds white farmland ownership, both during times of economic hardship and on marginal land. A 2005 Texas A&M University survey study, for example, found that white landowners were more likely to have land qualified for reserve programs—as well as programs such as the Stewardship Incentives Program and the Forestry Incentives Program . Such landowners not only received more favorable program outreach and assistance, vertical farming system as will be addressed below, they also had more incentives to participate due to the economies of scale and tax savings.
Toward this end, the study found that white landowners, on average, were enrolled in the CRP longer and signed up more acres than landowners of color voluntary conservation implementation, the 2014 Farm Bill requires conservation compliance on highly erodible land in order for such land to be eligible for crop insurance, thus placing an additional, and albeit environmentally crucial, financial hurdle for farmers of color who disproportionately own and work such land. Under the 2014 Farm Bill, the USDA’s largest organic agriculture programs—among them, the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program, the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative, the Organic Production and Market Data Initiatives, and the National Organic Program, all their funding was increased. Research on the relationship between structural racism and organic agriculture programs under the Farm Bill, however, remains limited. However, some organic agriculture programs do exhibit similar restrictions as those that characterize other commodity support and conservation programs. The EQIP Organic Initiative, which provides assistance to organic and transitioning-to-organic farmers and ranchers, and is among the USDA’s smaller organic agriculture programs for example, maintains a few critical barriers that have limited access to and benefit of such programs by farmers of color. Specifically, although the 2008 Farm Bill included new language to address the unique conservation needs of socio-economically disadvantaged producers, the EQIP Organic Initiative established a separate payment limitation on organic transition assistance and created a number of burdensome bureaucratic requirements for transitioning-to-organic producers thus hindering enrollment.
While such trends are troublesome, substantive research needs to be carried out to better understand the relationship that farmers of color hold to organic agriculture programs in particular. Ultimately, regardless of whether such incentive programs reach their intended recipients, organic agriculture itself does not operate outside of what Julie Guthman calls “the punishing logic of conventional agricultural production.” That is, she argues, payments to land for organic growers effectively reinforce preexisting patterns of agricultural production and ensure that they must compete as nominally capitalist enterprises in order to survive. For this reason, organic growers not only tend to replicate many aspects of conventional production, but they are also similarly vulnerable to processes of structural racialization. This is especially true with regard to problematic use of labor contractors, few improved labor practices, and similar wages for farm labor. As of 2013, for example, 1.5% of the largest organic farms account for 25% of all organic sales. Furthermore, 10% of all organic farms account for 75% of total sales, while for agriculture as a whole only 6% account for 75% of total sales. A fourth program, the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program, is vulnerable to reproducing the same inequities that characterize commodity and conservation programs alike, particularly in terms of program access and benefits accrued. Also known as the 2501 Program, the Outreach and Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program is authorized under the miscellaneous title and distributes support to entities that work with farmers of color and other socio-economically disadvantaged producers.
However, a number of troubling trends limit the potential gains of outreach and technical assistance for such producers. According to a 2007 Oxfam report, the 2501 program has received significantly less money than Congress has authorized: between 1994 and 2007, for example, the 2501 Program has received about $69 million—only 27% of the authorized amount of $255 million. The target of 2014 Farm Bill cuts, furthermore, funding for the 2501 program has dropped from $75 million to $50 million since 2008. Furthermore, although the 2501 program originally aimed to support socio-economically disadvantaged farmers and ranchers—particularly Black, Native American, Asian American, and Latino/a farmers and ranchers—there are several barriers to fully supporting such groups. Just as with EQIP, for example, the most recent Farm Bill expands the program to also serve returning military veterans entering farming, yet does so without increased funding, thus limiting outreach and technical assistance for farmers of color, and pitting such groups against one another. The expansion of the 2501 program, therefore, compounds the impact of the funding cuts outlined above and further undermines the potential of the program itself for farmers of color. Finally, when farmers of color are told they are not eligible for a particular program, they are left off the Farm Service Agency list of people to receive newsletters and other information about USDA benefits. Since most other USDA agencies use this list for outreach, failure to include farmers of color also leaves them ill-informed about deadlines for the purchase of crop insurance and disaster protection, or about the availability of conservation benefits. Efforts such as the Minority Farm Register, however, vertical farming racks reflect some positive steps toward such structural issues, yet the Minority Farm Register itself is voluntary and farmers of color may not be aware of it. According to a 2007 ETC Group report, corporations and governments across the world are waging an intense campaign to present bio-fuels as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuel use that could help combat climate change. All corporations that were producing transgenic crops at the time of the report—Syngenta, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Bayer, BASF— had investments in crops designed especially for the production of bio-fuels and have agreements with such transnational corporations as Cargill, Archer Daniel Midland, Bunge, which control the global grains trade. However, according to the ETC Group, the impulse behind bio-fuel production is not to abandon fossil fuels, nor to change the growth and consumption patterns that contribute to climate change. Rather, it is to create new sources of business by promoting and subsidizing the industrial production of crops that would supposedly serve these goals. Research has since shown that the environmental impact of industrial cultivation of bio-fuels largely negates its potential conservation benefits. Furthermore, bio-fuel production disproportionately affects farmers of color, and communities of color more broadly, particularly with respect to its impact on production, food prices, and corporate consolidation. Specifically, as outlined in Part II, by 2017, bio-fuels production could increase prices for wheat, coarse grains, oilseeds and vegetable oil by 8%, 13%, 7%, and 35%, respectively. Furthermore, bio-fuel economies reflect similar trends in consolidation of ownership as non-bio-fuel agricultural production that have undermined the socio-economic well-being of communities of color. In terms of bio-fuel refining, although farmers once owned most ethanol plants, as of 2014, there are only 12 companies that account for almost 53% of ethanol production capacity. Moreover, in terms of production, bio-fuel crops largely mirror concentration of non-bio-fuel production; as of 2014, 40% of the nation’s corn was harvested for fuel. Finally, according to the International Panel on Climate Change , mitigation efforts focused on land acquisition for bio-fuel production show negative impacts on the lives of poor people in many low- and medium-income countries, including dispossession of farmland and forests, particularly for indigenous peoples, women, and smallholders farmers. According to a 2008 World Bank report, the increases in bio-fuels production in the United States and other major bio-fuel producing countries have been driven by subsidies and mandates, which span food and agriculture policy as well as energy legislation.
The 2002 US Farm Bill became the first Farm Bill to explicitly include an energy title, which has since helped develop the bio-fuel industry through research, grants, and loans. As of 2008, the United States has a tax credit available to blenders of ethanol of $0.51 per gallon and an import tariff of $0.54 per gallon, as well as a bio-diesel blenders tax credit of $1 per gallon. Furthermore, separate energy bills in 2005 and 2007 created expanded mandates for bio-fuel use. For example, in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the federal government mandated 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012, the first renewable fuel volume mandate in the United States. In the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the mandate was raised to 15 billion gallons of ethanol from conventional sources by 2022 and 1.0 billion gallons of bio-diesel by 2012—thus doubling ethanol production and tripling bio-diesel production. Significantly, these mandates work by requiring fuel retailers to blend gasoline and ethanol , or requiring retailers to pay into a convoluted subsidy system. Thus, despite the issues outlined above, as well as the higher price of ethanol and its lower mileage , the federal government continues to force motorists to purchase it. Ultimately, consumers not only get hit at the grocery store, where bio-fuels continue to drive up food prices, but also at the pump, where they pay an extra $10 billion per year, more than a quarter of the $38 billion raised by the federal gasoline tax. Conventional agricultural production practices, which are encouraged by major food and agriculture policy, including the US Farm Bill, are major contributors to global climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and US Environmental Protection Agency, the agricultural sector is the largest contributor to global anthropogenic Conventional agricultural production practices, which are encouraged by major food and agriculture policy, including the US Farm Bill, are major contributors to global climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and US Environmental Protection Agency, the agricultural sector is the largest contributor to global anthropogenic will be significantly affected by climate change, such as agriculture and tourism. In California, as of 2014, for example, there were 739,000 agriculture laborers, 49.2% of whom were Latinos/ as. Workers in these industries, particularly agricultural laborers, would be the first to lose their jobs in the event of an economic downturn due to climatic troubles. Additionally, people of color already own the most marginal farmland and benefit the least from support programs, thus leaving certain producers themselves at greater risk due to climate change. Corporations, furthermore, stand to benefit by way of the impacts of climate change and a Farm Bill that serves corporate interests. In the 2014 Farm Bill, the crop insurance program expanded to cover specialty crops and account for the higher value of organics. Due to extreme weather, however, the program’s costs have grown even without changes to the Farm Bill. After the 2012 drought, for example, the Federal Crop Insurance Program paid out $17.3 billion in losses, the highest ever, breaking the earlier record set in 2011, yet taxpayers covered nearly 75% of the payouts, minimizing any cost to crop insurance corporations. The public thus subsidizes not only the destructive type of agriculture but also the insurance payouts themselves caused in part by such destructive methods—a resilient arrangement that leaves corporations benefitting the most.As this report found, the US food system and the outcomes generated by the Farm Bill in particular are characterized by widespread social, economic, political, and environmental inequity. Furthermore, such inequity was found to be characteristic of a society that itself produces inequity in every domain of social, economic, political, and environmental life. Thus, this report found, inequity within the food system—such as limited access to nutritious and affordable food, high quality land, or farmers support program benefits—cannot be addressed without addressing inequity within society as a whole—such as non-living wages, widely unequal dispersion of limited employment benefits, unfair treatment food chain workers by many institutions, and uneven democratic influence and access to positions of power across many sectors of society.