At a listening session on Wednesday, landowners and advocates spoke to the Department of Agriculture about the importance of reforming how the agency aids heirs property owners. The listening session was convened by the Farm Service Agency to collect input on a series of heirs property reforms mandated by the 2018 farm bill.
The FSA announced in late July that it would host two listening sessions on heirs property over the summer — one in Jackson, Mississippi, on July 31 and this week’s session in Washington, D.C. The agency was seeking feedback on several questions pertaining to the implementation of sections of the 2018 farm bill that relate to heirs property owners.
Heirs property is land that is passed down without a clear title, an arrangement common among African-American, Native American, and other communities that have historically lacked and continue to lack access to legal services. The 2018 farm bill included provisions intended to make it easier for heirs property owners to get a farm serial number, which would allow farm owners to participate in USDA programs, and lays out conditions under which the USDA can be called upon to help heirs property owners.
Speakers at the listening session addressed a full room of advocates, heirs property owners, and USDA staff. Many speakers traveled from areas where black farmers have been particularly affected by land loss, including South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia.
Several speakers emphasized that the USDA should work diligently to ensure that heirs property owners have access to educational resources and information on USDA programs in languages they can understand. Black landowners have lost their land in part because “people weren’t speaking the same language, they weren’t writing the same language, they weren’t reading the same language, so therefore they lost the property,” said Queen Quet, chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation.
Especially considering the historical distrust between black landowners and the USDA, “education is the key,” said Jennie Stephens, CEO of the Center for Heirs Property Preservation in Charleston, South Carolina. “Landowners need to make informed decisions.”
The profile of heirs property issues has risen in recent years. Thirteen states have passed the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, a law that provides due-process protections to heirs property owners and aids in safeguarding them from predatory land buyers. Ten additional states have introduced the law. Recent reporting has shed light on the loss of heirs property among black rural landowners.
When land is inherited without a clear title, all of the landowners’ heirs share the land as “tenants-in-common.” This type of ownership makes land particularly vulnerable because any one heir can sell their portion of the land or force the sale of the entire parcel. Heirs property owners have often lost their land to these “partition sales,” including to developers who have taken advantage of the vulnerable ownership model. Heirs property is particularly common among lower-income and historically marginalized communities.
Several of the groups represented at the Wednesday listening session have been working on black land loss for decades, including the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, the Rural Coalition, and the Land Loss Prevention Project. Many speakers emphasized the need to protect ownership of the land remaining in the hands of black farmers and rural families. Black farmers have lost 12 million acres of land in the past century.
“We were the stewards of the land, and that’s why they brought us here,” said Ebonie Alexander, executive director of the Black Family Land Trust in Durham, North Carolina. “Outside of Native Americans, we have been stewards of the land longer than anyone. What we want to do is take that pride of stewardship … and pass that to the next generation.”