The History of Our Food System is Rooted in Racism
We’re exploring the history of oppression in the U.S. agriculture and food systems.
As we strive to build a more inclusive farming system, it is important that we acknowledge the ugly history and policies that have brought us to where we are today. Only by taking a hard look at our past can we hope to build a better future.
While you read, please note that we are highly aware that no one article can capture the entire history of oppression in the U.S. and all the ways food, agriculture, policy, poverty, health, and climate change intersect with race. We hope this article will help familiarize people with these issues and get a foundational understanding of our history. We will explore these topics in greater detail and focus in future articles! If you are interested in learning more about any of these topics, please visit our Strong Roots database, which contains all the sources used in this article and many more!
Late 1600s- late 1800s
Like with many issues related to race within the U.S., discrimination and inequality in agriculture began with slavery. The slave trade powered the booming production of tobacco, cotton, and cane sugar in the American South, dating back to the late 1600s. Even the creation of American constitution–which asserted the equality of all men–turned a blind eye in light of the economic engine that slavery provided the new country. The late 1700s brought on the decline of tobacco and rise of cotton, which by 1835 represented half of U.S. exports. This economic power is what inspired many of the Southern states to succeed from the Union in the aftermath of political pressure to abolish slavery–Southerners, both rich and poor, believed that slavery was their golden ticket to independence.
“No matter how wide the gap between rich and poor, class tensions among whites were eased by the belief they all belonged to the ‘superior race.’”
– How Slavery Became the Economic Engine of the South, History.com. Image source: Encyclopedia Brittanica .
Following the Confederates’ loss in the Civil War in April 1865 and the ratification of the 13th amendment in December 1865, former slaves were given “freedom” to own their own land and find paid jobs. However, the predatory practice of sharecropping ensured that newly-freed Black people were not able to prosper. Sharecropping was a system where a landlord allowed a tenant to use their land in exchange for a share of their crop. While the system appeared equitable on paper, in practice it was deeply unfair to sharecroppers, one-third of whom were recently-freed Black families.
“High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords…kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next.”
Slavery by Another Name, PBS. Image source: The Virginia Pilot
1900s-1950s
While the Industrial Revolution made sharecropping obsolete, predatory and discriminatory policies have remained a nefarious legacy within the agricultural system. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has historically denied farmers of color access to the same financial support that allowed their white counterparts to industrialize and thrive. The truth lies within the numbers: in the the aftermath of slavery and sharecropping, more than 900,000 Black farmers owned over 15.6 million acres of land. By the end of the 1900s, the number had dwindled to just 18,000 farmers owning 2 million acres.
Image source: Civil Eats
Today, white farmers still dominate the agricultural industry. A 2018 study determined that between 2012 and 2014:
White farmers comprised >97% of non-farming landowners, 96% of owner-operators, and 86% of tenant operators
White farmers generated 98% of all farm-related income from land ownership and 97% of the income that comes from operating farms.
BIPOC farmers comprised <3% of non-farming landowners and <4% percent of owner-operators. BIPOC farmers were also more likely to be tenants than owners, owned less land and smaller farms, and generated less wealth from farming.
Latinx farmers comprised 2% of non-farming landowners and 6% percent of owner-operators and tenant operators. Latinx people also comprised >80% of farm laborers.
This last point leads us to confront the “notoriously under-compensated, difficult, and vulnerable position in U.S. farming” that immigrant workers shoulder. Just as the American agricultural system was once built upon the backs of African slaves, today it is immigrants and migrant workers from Central and South American that bear the burden of a modern day slavery.
Discrimination in the food system doesn’t just affect the production of food, but also its distribution. As of the 2015 census, 23.5 million Americans live in areas commonly referred to as food deserts–although experts prefer the term ‘food apartheid’ due to the fact that these neighborhoods are created and perpetuated intentionally. These neighborhoods are characterized as urban or rural communities that lack access to healthy and affordable food and the racial divides are clear: “African Americans are half as likely to have access to chain supermarkets and Hispanics are a third less likely to have access to chain supermarkets.”
The cause? The Great Migration of the early 20th century saw over six million Black people leave the rural South to escape systemic racism and violence and seek economic opportunities in the country’s largest cities. There, they were met with a long list of racially-prejudiced government policies that funneled and trapped the newcomers into segregated neighborhoods (commonly referred to as redlining). With the suburban boom following WWII, upper and middle-class white city dwellers moved out of the cities and businesses, including supermarkets, followed, leaving poor and BIPOC communities stranded.
A lack of access to healthy food has caused a domino effect on BIPOC, Latinx, and immigrant communities. Denied access to grocery stores with their fresh food aisles, food desert residents rely on convenience stores for their weekly shopping, leading to higher intakes of fat, salt, and sugar, which in turn make them more vulnerable to obesity, heart disease, hypertension and a myriad of other chronic diseases. Poor diet can also lead to stunted cognitive development in early childhood, while the lack of supermarket jobs can limit employment opportunities in the community.
“Food is life. It is necessity and pleasure, family and community, culture and power. When plentiful and freely shared, food creates healthy communities and strong societies; when scarce or unfairly distributed, it damages and, in time kills, spirit, body, family, community.”
- Unshared Bounty: How Structural Racism Contributes to the Creation and Persistence of Food Deserts, NYLS & ACLU
1960s - Present
But, just as life always finds a way, so does food. While urban farming has been around since the inception of cities, it is truly the tool BIPOC communities leveraged in order to get access to the fresh food needed to thrive and prosper.
Urban farming saw a resurgence in the creation of Victory Gardens in the aftermath of WWII. In Black, Latinx, and indigenous communities, the urban farming renaissance came about during the drastic urban decline many cities experienced in the 60s and 70s. In an effort to fight for the integrity of their communities, Black and Latinx farmers established gardens to revitalize vacant lots, create opportunities for community gatherings, and provide much needed health food to the neighborhood. Today, redlined neighborhoods in the U.S. have an estimated 18,000 urban community gardens. While each community is different, there are consistent benefits, such as economic growth, job creation, increased food security, improved public health, and much more.
Today, urban farming–which we have seen was historically initiated by BIPOC groups– has been co-opted by predominantly white and affluent groups. In an excerpt from Farming While Black, author Leah Penniman reflects the frustration of seeing the hard work of these communities being overshadowed by white “pioneers”:
“Under the guise of color-blindness, public and private sectors have facilitated gentrification, promoting a vision of low-income communities as the “urban frontier,” encouraging young, middle-class white people to act as urban “pioneers” and “homesteaders” by populating these communities building by building, block by block. These white “pioneers” have co-opted urban farming in many locations, attracting grants, media attention, and public influence denied to the Black founders of the movement.” (Excerpt online at How The Great Migration Led to Urban Farming)
Brandon M. Hoover makes a similar point in his Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development article White spaces in black and Latino places: Urban agriculture and food sovereignty:
“[The urban agriculture movement] is predominately white, hegemonic, and exclusive. As a movement, [it] is largely championed by a middle-class white populace as part of the alternative food movement, rather than being understood as having historical roots in predominantly black and/or Latino neighborhoods. As a result, urban agriculture generally creates white spaces in otherwise black or Latino places.”
With this mind, Freight Farms has made the conscious decision to be part of the solution instead of perpetuating the problem. To facilitate the kind of introspection needed to do this properly, we created the Open Doors team at Freight Farms in June 2020. As a group, we are dedicated to viewing our business, values, hiring, company culture, and farmer community through the lens of diversity, inclusion, and justice. For this reason, we want to know what you are most interested in learning about. Email us at growfoodhere@freightfarms.com, message us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or contact us using this form.
(Header image source: History.com)