In FERN’s latest piece, produced in partnership with NPR’s Climate Desk, Amy Mayer scrutinizes the likelihood that USDA’s climate-smart partnerships will meet its ambitious equity goals.
As Mayer writes:
“The Biden administration’s $3.1 billion Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities grant program hopes to convince farmers and ranchers to adopt practices that will reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in the ground. It also seeks to make amends for a century of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers the grants. In its program description, USDA said Black, Native, and other “historically underserved” farmers needed to be a key part of all projects in the climate-smart program.
“It is a laudable goal, but one that faces many obstacles. The climate-smart partnerships are just underway, but it’s clear that some of the biggest projects—the ones that got the most taxpayer money and are led by giant for-profit companies and major agricultural lobbying groups—have not thought through in any detail how they will serve BIPOC farmers.
“And while strict measurements are in place for quantifying climate progress, grantees will evaluate their own success or failure on matters of equity. Also, USDA’s definition of “historically underserved” farmers includes not just ethnic and racial minorities but veterans, young and beginning farmers, women, and those operating at poverty level—so it’s possible for a project to meet the USDA’s equity goal without serving any Black farmers at all.
“Perhaps the biggest obstacle for meeting the equity goal isn’t structural, but a matter of trust. The USDA’s long history of discriminating against Black farmers and other ethnic and racial minorities—by denying them access to low-interest loans, grants, and other forms of assistance—resulted in significant financial losses for those farmers over the course of the 20th century, and in many cases led to the loss of their land.”