Around three years ago, some news folks started the black farmer story of woes, and talked about the numbers of black farmers in the 1920s. One million black farmers existed.
Today? 45,000 are all that exist. A story of woe? No.
The farm population in 1920 consisted of 32-million total.....black, white, Asian, Latino, etc (around one-third of the nation was within this group). In the 1920s....industry arrived and offered better paying jobs, and automation started to show up. You didn't need four guys to operate a 100-acre farm as you got into the 1950s/1960s.
So a second event started to occur. People reached a point where 50 acres of farmland did not provide the type of income to 'survive'.
If you walk around today....if you say black-ownership....49-percent of people qualified as black farmers....run a 50-acre or smaller operation. The rule-of-thumb is that a 50-acre farm (at best) is enough to have around 25 to 30 head of cattle. You'd have support this with feed, and draw upon your expenses....to make this work....so the simple idea of a guy trying to get ahead with 50 acres....is fairly stupid....yet 49-percent of black farm ownership falls into this category.
Getting to the 180-acre or larger farm (up to 1,000 acres)? Thirteen-percent of black-owned farms fall into this category. This is likely one of the two scenarios where black-owned farms are fairly successful (the other second is the 1,000 acre or more farms).
Trying to suggest racial discrimination? Once automation came, and manpower became the 'thread' of financial success....where you needed to have a farm of significance (180 acres or more)....the business model of the small-time farm dissolved away. It went that way for blacks and whites. The only way to make real profit off 50 acres or less....is to run some bio-home garden operation, and selling garden products to local grocery or stand operations. If you don't modify your farm plan....you don't survive.
So I look at these journalists and politicians....who mostly have never been to a farm in their life, and wonder if they grasp the history to this.
The other odd part of this story trend? State by state, the black farm ownership differs.
Back in 2012....out of California, there were a total of 126k farmers in the state. Of that....ONLY 526 were black.
A 2007 study by USDA showed that the majority of black-owned farms were actually cattle ranches (near 45-percent). Black farms producing fruits and nuts? If you took all farms (blacks and whites in the mix) in the nation....barely five-percent of them produce fruits and nuts, of that....black owned farms marginally had around two-percent of the deal.
If you were looking for states with higher numbers of black farm ownership....it's in the south....now on the west coast, eastern seaboard or northern frontier of the US.
No comments:
Post a Comment