Categories: News

Texas agriculture official sues Biden administration, saying aid to farmers of color discriminates against white farmers

Last month, agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack pledged to reverse decades of discriminatory lending practices and policies by the USDA with the help of $4 billion earmarked from The American Rescue Plan to help Black farmers and other farmers of color with debt relief. This week, with the help of a Trump-aligned legal group, Texas agriculture commissioner Sid Miller filed a lawsuit claiming that the plan to redress discrimination was itself discriminatory because it leaves out white farmers, reports FERN’s Ag Insider Daily. “These racial exclusions are patently unconstitutional, and the Court should permanently enjoin their enforcement,” the suit argues. Black farmers lost more than 90 percent of the land they owned between 1910 and 1997, while white farmers only lost 2 percent. By the time President Obama took office, the agency had a backlog of more than 14,000 discrimination complaints.

Related Post
The Counter and The Counter
Share
Published by
The Counter and The Counter

Recent Posts

Grist acquires The Counter and launches food and agriculture vertical

Grist, an award-winning, nonprofit media organization dedicated to highlighting climate solutions and uncovering environmental injustices,…

6 months ago

Is California giving its methane digesters too much credit?

Every year, California dairy farms emit hundreds of thousands of tons of the potent greenhouse…

3 years ago

Your car is killing coho salmon

Highway 7 runs north-south through western Washington, carving its way through a landscape sparsely dotted…

3 years ago

The pandemic has transformed America’s dining landscape into an oligopoly dominated by chains 

One of the greatest pleasures I had as a child growing up in the Chicago…

3 years ago

California is moving toward food assistance for all populations—including undocumented immigrants

Undocumented immigrants experience food insecurity at much higher rates than other populations, yet they are…

3 years ago

Babka, borscht … and pumpkin spice? Two writers talk about Jewish identity through contemporary cookbooks.

Writer Charlotte Druckman and editor Rebecca Flint Marx are both Jewish journalists living in New…

3 years ago