U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Secretary speaks with underserved, minority farmers at annual Sherrod Institute Farm Field Day

ALBANY – United States Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack visited southwest Georgia Thursday to attend the Sherrod Institute’s Farm Field Day and address the plight of underserved farmers. He stood on land that civil rights activists Charles and Shirley Sherrod fought for decades to secure as a space where black farmers could collaboratively farm.

The Farm Field Day is an annual event held by the nonprofit that brings educational resources and networking opportunities to underserved farmers. This year’s event saw more than 400 attendees from across the Southeastern U.S., who heard addresses from the USDA’s Equity Commission; Penny Brown Reynolds, the assistant secretary for civil rights; Jewel Bronaugh, the president and CEO of 1890 Universities Foundation and Dewayne Goldmon, the senior advisor for Racial Equity to the Secretary of Agriculture.

Shirley Sherrod, the executive director and co-founder of the Sherrod Institute, a nonprofit created to support minority farmers, said the event is about bringing farmers together across different states to learn from each other.

“A farmer needs to understand that his success is going to depend on not just what he does in the dirt, but how he also worked with other farmers within and outside of his community,” she said.

It was also an opportunity for USDA officials to hear feedback on its programs and stories of discrimination faced by the region’s black farmers.

The Field Day was just one of a series of the USDA’s regional equity convenings.

Sherrod said Vilsack’s visit was unique to the Georgia convening, adding she wasn’t accepting a keynote address from anyone less than Vilsack himself for southwest Georgia.

“The best thing is for him to hear directly from those individuals who experienced the discrimination, and they have to live with and deal with it all the time,” Sherrod said. “Hopefully, that will help him as he works to implement programs.”

Vilsack said the USDA is focused on acknowledging its past and looking toward a better future where those who want to engage in agriculture have the access to needed resources.

“When you provide equity, justice, and opportunity to one, you are, in essence, providing it to all, essentially making this country a more resilient, fairer, and more just place," he said.

Farmers of color and female farmers from across the country have filed lawsuits against the USDA alleging discrimination through the denial of access to loans, loan servicing, grant programs and other assistance. Complaints read that the discrimination has resulted in millions of dollars in economic loss as well as land loss through foreclosures.

The USDA is trying to make amends.

Goldmon said each regional meeting has a different focus, and the one in southwest Georgia was focused on black farmers. He said it’s a way for the USDA to inform farmers about programs that will benefit them, like the Stressed Borrower program to help farmers deal with debt and climate mitigation programs to protect farmers from the “harmful results of climate change.”

He said it’s also a way for the USDA to rebuild trust.

“A lot of people that we’re trying to reach fundamentally don’t trust us, so, being able to work through organizations like this one to get those benefits down to the farmer level is critical,” Goldmon said.

At Thursday’s event, members of the USDA Equity Commission talked about hundreds of recommendations they’ve made to the USDA to help producers that had been overlooked.

Ron Rainey said these recommendations include changing how county Farm Service Agencies, where the USDA’s programs are delivered, operate. Sherrod said she feels county offices were one of the tools used to take land away from black farmers.

Rainey said the commission pushed for a diverse county committee and for more accountability on county committees, potentially moving executive directors to a federal level.

“That committee is a very powerful institution in delivering programs, and in many of our counties, there was no diversity in those county committees,” he said. “So, we pushed to get … people that look like people across this room to be representative.”

Cecilia Hernandez, the commission’s designated federal officer, said diversity training was implemented within county committees and increased the minority committee members' contract from one to three years.

Several farmers stood up to press USDA officials for answers on how they plan to address past grievances.

Andrew Smith Sr. was one of those farmers. He is the CEO of Smith Brother’s Ranch in Long County.

One issue, Smith pointed out, was the required documentation needed to apply for relief from the IRA. Over three generations of family ranching, he said documentation was lost, and he couldn’t submit an application for relief for discrimination that transpired during his father’s tenure.

One form of relief is the USDA’s Discrimination Financial Assistance program. Through President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, Congress provided $2.2 billion in financial assistance to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who experienced discrimination in USDA farm lending programs prior to January 2021.

“We were looking at whatever reparations were available, whatever revenue was out there that could be acquired,” he said. “The money that was available – you had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get it.”

Smith said any improvements he’s made to his family’s land since has come from out of his pocket. He said there are still discriminatory practices happening within county offices.

“You can’t just sweep around the center of the floor, you need to get the corners and everything else where people are sitting in those offices that did this and now they’re still doing it,” he said. “Those people that are in those local offices need to get out and listen to those farmers.”

He said he believes USDA officials received the message:

“There’s still work to be done, and they need to get down to the grassroots,” Smith said.

Chiquita Holsey, co-owner of Holsey Farms – a Leesburg farm that receives support from the Sherrod Institute’s Southwest Georgia Project, had a one-on-one conversation with Vilsack to address some of the needs of small farmers.

She said as a new, small farm, it is often difficult to receive the proper funding for things like equipment. She said larger farms tend to get funding first so that by the time it trickles down to smaller ones, there isn’t much left over.

Holsey said one day her family’s farm would like to grow, but currently they’re having to use their own personal money. She also said applications for funding tend to be long and tedious.

“A lot of people are not farming, so just make it so that those who would like to have the resources in place to be able to finance what they need,” she said.

Holsey Farms has been operating for about eight years. She said the Farm Field Day is a great way to meet other farmers and exchange ideas.

There was an array of farmer exhibitions at the Field Day – from Pride Road, which is veteran-owned and -operated and creates hibiscus-based products to Tilford Winery, the only Muscadine Winery in the southeast to make dry, sweet and semi-sweet organic wines.

Sherrod said smart climate practices was a big topic at this year’s event – helping farmers understand that what they do directly impacts the earth. Groups of attendees took a climate-smart tour to see some of projects implemented on the land through partnerships with 1890 universities.

“We end up getting more floods, more hurricanes and that, more often than not, impacts individual farm operations; so, helping farmers to understand that so they implement practices that are more Earth friendly,” she said.

Sherrod told the crowd at the beginning of the Field Day program that in the 1960s she never would have imagined that the 2024 Field Day – with its large attendance and with an in-person visit from the Secretary of Agriculture – would happen.

“It’s so special to us as a people, as a community and especially for me … I’ve been out there working for many many years,” she said.

Sherrod has a storied history of fighting to preserve, educate and support black farmers who face the challenge of indiscriminately being denied financial services to start and maintain operation of their farms. In the 1960s, Sherrod and her husband, Charles Sherrod, established New Communities, an independent community for black families to collectively own and farm land.

As the first community land trust in the country, it became a model across the world. However, 6,000 acres of the land was seized years later due to drought and discriminatory government loan practices.

Decades later, the Sherrods joined a class action lawsuit in which they and other black farmers won a settlement, and they were able to purchase a title to what was formerly the largest plantation in Georgia – New Communities at Cypress Pond.

Sherrod said the land is a place for education, but also a place for healing for black farmers. She said she only wishes her husband could have been there to see this year’s Field Day.

“We worked so hard together,” she said. “He would have been in heaven, and I hope he’s there now, looking down and smiling.”