USDA aid to financially distressed borrowers tops $1 billion
The Agriculture Department announced an additional $130 million in assistance to financially distressed borrowers on Monday, boosting total farm loan relief for producers to approximately $1.1 billion since last fall. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Congress wanted aid delivered quickly "and that is what we are delivering to help producers across the country stay on their land."
Lawsuit seeks to restore U.S. aid for Black farmers
The government must honor its 2021 offer of $4 billion in loan forgiveness to Black and other socially disadvantaged farmers, even though Congress repealed the aid program this summer, said a class action lawsuit filed on Wednesday. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who filed suit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, likened the situation to the loss of assistance to Black farmers after the Civil War.
Preliminary injunction against USDA debt relief for minority farmers
A federal judge in Fort Worth agreed with white farmers that they were unfairly excluded by Congress from a loan forgiveness program for socially disadvantaged farmers and issued a preliminary injunction that bars the USDA “from discriminating on account of race or ethnicity” in running the …