REAL Talks - Episode 9: An Interrupted System: Prioritizing Historically Underserved Voices for Food & Agriculture System Transformation

This episode discusses how federal programming and funding can be used to respond to the needs of Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic producers and how disruptions like COVID-19 can exacerbate systemic issues of unequal distribution of power and resources.

August 19, 2024

In this episode of REAL Talks, Kolia Souza, Food Systems Equity & Advocacy Specialist of CRFS, and Maria Graziani, Food Systems Specialist and Food Impact Fellow with the Federation of American Scientists, discuss how federal programming and funding can be used to respond to the needs of Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic producers. Over time, there are several examples of instances where societal interruptions, such as COVID-19, have caused food systems to recalibrate in ways that unequally distribute power and resources.

In this episode, they were joined in conversation by:

Marcus Coleman, Ph.D. Professor of Practice, Economics + Strategy, Leadership, & Analytics at Tulane University
Rachel Lindvall, Retired Extension Specialist at South Dakota State University
Keesa V. Johnson, M Des, Food Systems Strategy Design Specialist at MSU Center for Regional Food Systems

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The relaunch of this podcast series will focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, across the food and agriculture system. Through this and future episodes, different aspects of this topic will be discussed with members of CRFS and the Racial Equity in the Food System (REFS) National Workgroup. REFS brings together Cooperative Extension professionals and community stakeholders to connect, learn, and collaborate to facilitate change within our institutions and society to build racial equity within the food system.

These episodes will explore the following questions:

Is there adequate funding for programs that are centering Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous voices?
Is the technical assistance that is being funded adequate for supporting these producers when they are scaling up their businesses?

Listen to their discussion on the podcast!

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Transcript of Episode

Kolia Souza (00:13): Welcome to REAL Talks, Reaching for Equity in All Lives. I'm Kolia Souza, Food System Equity and Advocacy Specialist with Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems, also known as CRFS. And I'm joined again by this episode series co-host, Maria Graziani.

Maria Graziani (00:29): Hello again, everyone. I am a food system specialist and currently in the role of Food Impact Fellow with the Federation of American Scientists. As a fellow with FAS, I work to develop research focused on equity and accessibility in mid-tier agricultural markets.

Kolia Souza (00:47): So as a reminder to our audience, this series of episodes is exploring two straightforward questions. Is there adequate funding for programs that are centering Black, Hispanic and Indigenous voices, and is the technical assistance that is being funded adequate for supporting these producers when they're scaling?

Maria Graziani (01:06): As you know, a part of my fellowship, I am looking at the accessibility of funding for Black, Hispanic and tribal producers when working to scale their farm operations. I've also been looking at core competencies for technical assistance that support the knowledge base and the growing of BIPOC producers, along with a few other topics like the effectiveness of wholesale incentive programs and food hub leadership development.

Kolia Souza (01:35): The journey through this conversation started out as more of an historical overview, and as you can imagine, gaps inevitably emerge between each of these points.

Maria Graziani (01:47): And particularly, we were looking at the equity commission that was developed during the pandemic and the equity commission is made up of multiple experts around the country and they're providing recommendations to the USDA. And looking at these recommendations, one of them was to increase funding and also to increase the duration of funding in order to move the USDA towards a more systemic systems change that's based in equity. And this is what evolved my research, asking what is happening to support these recommendations and what funding is in place or not that is supporting the system's change, what is moving the recommendations that the equity commission has made to actual programmatic actions? And many food systems professionals are keenly interested in how federal programming and federal funding can be leveraged but also shifted to respond to the historically underserved voices in agriculture.

Kolia Souza (03:00): In this episode, we're going to take a closer look at some of those emerging gaps and gain some insight into how we might identify strategic leverage points to shift our food and agriculture system. So let's jump into it. If you were to kind of fast-forward to more recently, you have the American Rescue Plan Act. So back in 2021, ARPA, the American Rescue Plan Act, allocated $4 billion to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers and recognition of historical discrimination from the USDA. But ARPA was repealed under the Inflation Reduction Act the following year when banks and white farmers filed lawsuits. So I'll just note that this action from five white farmers was dismissed without prejudice when the IRA, Inflation Reduction Act was passed. But then the IRA replaced that $4 billion from ARPA with $3 billion in relief for economically distressed farmers of any race, and that included $2.2 billion for any farmer who could prove discrimination.

Marcus Coleman (04:12): I'll just say just from a key aspect of that is not only you have this legislation that occurs and when funding becomes available, part of the other issue is once these things become available, who actually has access to those funds? And so, from a historical perspective, if we look over the history as a great book that was written, it talks about some of the histories of the issues that Black farmers have had related to both the USDA but also the Cooperative Extension Service, A great book, Dispossession, outlines some of those struggles. And in some ways, shape or form, we still see some of those struggles existing today. In much of the legislation you talk about things like economically distressed farmers or socially disadvantaged farmers, it's all about how we define what Farmer Group has access to those funds. And so, I'll just point that out as a key aspect of funding and who has access to funding in legislative holdups as some of those equitable barriers that still exist today.

Rachel Lindvall (05:16): The other piece of information that I like to bring forward is there is a difference specifically in Indian country of organizational efforts towards food production versus individual efforts. So we have a lot of tribal programs or other tribal nonprofits that are getting involved in agriculture and their experience is different than that of individual producers, whether they're farming or ranching at whatever scale. And we need to be encouraging both of those to happen because right now I think what I'm seeing in a contemporary setting is that there are fewer and fewer individuals trying to get involved and a lot more organizations. And so, we need kind of a dual focus in that area as to how we approach providing assistance.

Maria Graziani (06:31): Keesa, can you say more on the 100 plus farmers that you have worked with in Michigan, is there a story or a case study or what process did a farmer use to get capital or what technical assistance providers do you know farmers go to whom they trust to help them to scale?

Keesa Johnson (06:54): So a lot of times when it comes to the Black and brown farmers, it depends on what type of farmer they are. Like the USDA tends to use one definition of farmers, but when you talk about people of color, you talk about many different forms of farming. And so, it depends because just taking back from the first question to coming into this and then I'll demonstrate some things that it is some organizations that are getting the money, but it's so many other farmers and people of culture that are not getting the funding due again to the processes.

Kolia Souza (07:35): Going back to what Keesa said a little bit earlier about hoop houses, and to your question Maria, I think infrastructure is really important here and the rise of aggregators, food hubs is really important. So for one thing, I'm looking forward to seeing what these emerging USDA investments and Regional Food business centers and the Resilient Food System Infrastructure funding that's being distributed to every state does. And Keesa kind of alluded to that too, all the funding that USDA is putting out there, but there's so many requirements for wholesale distribution. They give out GAP certification considerations for organic, minimum buying requirements and insurance, and all of that creates barriers to market entry. So when I was working with the National Grocers Association Foundation and we were providing technical assistance for local sourcing and grocery, this being through the Nutrition Incentive Program National Training, Technical Assistance, Evaluation, and Information Center, long name, I know. We, as the technical assistance providers, called it the Nutrition Incentive Hub that was the side that we worked on.

There was an aggregator that we engaged in discussions with Roberto Meza and the East Denver Food Hub, and they also had a dedication to equity. So getting back to what Keesa was talking about, they were really about leveling the playing field for farmers of color. And similarly, there's Red Tomato, whose director, Angel Mendez, I met him at a food systems leadership retreat back in 2018. So I think another piece of this is it's encouraging when you have operators who are also people of color who are able to make these pathways within aggregation and distribution.

Marcus Coleman (09:27): There's also a history in there within loan practices of how it can relate directly to Black land loss. If a farmer historically has defaulted on a loan, people come in and take their land. So that's a piece of that as well. A piece of it that's also very important to me as we're talking about scaling up and particularly, we're talking about farmers that move away from more of the high volume, low value crops to more high value crops, such as a variety of different fruits and vegetables is access to markets. And so, within much of our programming, and I'll use the USDA's Foreign Ag Service and various trade missions that happen all around the world when we go across the globe, marketing US agricultural commodities. Similar initiatives should be done domestically for small to mid-scale producers that have an interest in scaling up but don't know exactly if a market exists for their crops.

Similar to trade missions, we can do different missions, regional missions just to understand what types of crops are growing and help farmers bridge that gap to understand what markets are available to them. And I guess, the last point I'll make related to that is when I was doing farmer training work and we were talking about scaling up, one of the things that we did is we got together a group of buyers from smaller regional grocery chains and we took them around to the farms just to help build those relationships. And so, they can just understand the variety of different things that were being produced across Louisiana, but those things don't come cheap. Those things require funding and additional support for that as well. And so, those are just some of the things that I'll point out in that regard.

Rachel Lindvall (11:20): I'd like to weigh in a little bit as well, and I think what we're starting to see is there are a web of interrelated problems that we're looking to level out, and I think we need to keep in mind the idea of equity, which in my mind is meeting people where they're at. I know in South Dakota and North Dakota and Nebraska in a lot of the areas where we have a large native population who are interested in food systems, but they're coming at it in a way from as we talk about farming, it's almost an interrupted system that's going on here.

So you have people who maybe their first generation ancestors going one generation back weren't able to do that because of all of the changes that happened to them relating to just the problems of acquiring land in Indian country. There's a whole patchwork. I always try to reference people to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation if you want to really understand what it's like to try and work with and acquire a working amount of land. So as you're going back, you have people who haven't had the opportunity to farm as such. They may have worked on ranches, but in terms of food production, they've been denied that opportunity to really participate.

Maria Graziani (13:11): Are there other programs or design of programs that any of you have seen as doing really great work and maybe even the best work that you've seen in the country that are really making a difference in Black farmer businesses and Black farms developing in the US?

Marcus Coleman (13:34): So I'll take the approach of this is looking at farmers as entrepreneurs, which if you're a revenue generating farmer, you're an entrepreneur. And I'll approach it from a possibility's perspective of looking at how treating farmers like we treat entrepreneurs and some of the support that's provided through the small business administration and whatnot and how best we can utilize such a model in our funding mechanisms to do these things. There are a number of different community-based organizations that do a great job through, whether it's incubator programs, trying to take some of the various such as Land Out and those programs. Some of those programs do make very good use of some of the grant funding that's available from USDA. But I think that one of the possibilities in sort of the approach that we have to take looking at how we best serve Black farmers is just understanding that in this environment, they're entrepreneurs, our loan practices are what they are.

That's no different than anybody else that's trying to start a business, going in and acquiring the necessary capital to do that. But with the understanding as well that there are barriers that certain populations of people run into when they go into these establishments to get these sorts of loans. And so, I think that as we are designing policy and putting the necessary funding in place to do this, we have to do that with sort of a broader mechanism in mind. And agriculture now, in many ways looks very different than the rural agriculture that we were used to supporting and how much of those rural supports were based upon sort of high volume, low value crops as a part of that. And it comes with the understanding of that we've just got to treat this thing very differently. As far as some examples of folks that are making use of the resources that are available, not only making use of the government funding that's available, but also organizations that are doing a very good job at leveraging private funding and philanthropic support.

I mean, you could look at organizations like SPROUT NOLA in New Orleans, Louisiana, you have the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association that does a great job in North Carolina, Georgia Organics based out of Atlanta that covers much of the state of Georgia and providing the necessary supports and technical assistance to assist farmers in doing much of the things that they want to do, which includes the opportunities to scale up. I think the key caveat to most of those organizations is that they have a very solid understanding of the farmers that they serve, and they have a very active role in the communities to which those farmers exist. But that's what I can provide as a limited answer to that because that was certainly a deep question.

Rachel Lindvall (16:45): I could give a little bit of a perspective on some of the things that are going on amongst Native American organizations. I think that previously we mentioned the Keepseagle suit and what was done with, I guess, for lack of a better term, the leftover funds because Keepseagle had an unexpectedly low rate of people who were able to prove up their claim. And so, the Native American Agriculture Fund was started with the remainders of that, and they are giving out funds through a granting process within native communities to organizations who are looking at addressing some of the problems that were caused as a result of the denial. So I'd lift them up. I think there are a lot of other programs throughout in smaller, perhaps more regional ways that are addressing the issues. I think the concept in Indian country of food sovereignty has really resonated and is kind of inspiring people to look outside the box of federal systems and federal funding that really hasn't worked for them.

And I think there are loads of those going on. And again, I think what happens is if you have organizations within a tribe or within a region that are able to act as a gathering point for that funding and then help distribute to individual farmers or smaller organizations, I think that's helpful. One of the other things that I'll mention too is there is a group from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore who are looking at why USDA grants that are supposed to go directly to farmers through AMS are really not being utilized by BIPOC farmers and they have not completed their research as of yet, but I think it'll be interesting to follow them. And I had a little bit of involvement. They are looking at several different communities of Black farmers, Indigenous farmers, Hispanic farmers, and to try and interact directly with them as to why they are not able or successful in applying for some of the grant funding available through Ag marketing service programs.

If we want to think in sort of a radical change way about our food systems and we talk about subsidies by the act of subsidizing certain crops, the selection of certain crops, we're structuring a food system that as I talk with people who are having conversations about food sovereignty, these are not the crops that they're interested in being part of their food system. And we can talk about corn, we can talk about soybeans, we can even talk about the dairy industry. And it is unfortunately kind of a radical issue to think about, but when I talk to beginning farmers or food producers, those are not their areas of interest because of economic reasons about getting in there as a small producer, but also in terms of the food and the health values that some of those food producers want for their communities. There are some fundamental issues there with federal subsidy and food as medicine, food as an avenue for good health and better human development.

Kolia Souza (21:31): Okay. Rachel is making such a good point here because now what I'm thinking about is the White House Conference on Hunger Nutrition and Health. So to this point that's being made about reframing and what that does to shift funding, is this kind of conversation when we look at what is it that communities actually want. So this idea of the global market versus a more localized regional market, what does it take to build into that more localized regional market that I could even go so far as to say is more culturally relevant? What do we need? What would be reprioritized in terms of the inputs and outputs of that kind of system that would seek to serve a more specific population?

Marcus Coleman (22:24): I think the same level of supports that we put in talking about serving global agriculture in the United States' presence in global agriculture has to become sort of our same sort of focus related to domestic farm policy. And even as we talk about domestic farm policy, that focus has to again shift from focusing on those more high volume, low value crops such as corn and soybeans, to begin to place an emphasis on a diverse core of fruits and vegetables at the local level in order to shorten supply chains. One of the things that out of all the negative impacts that we saw from the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the positives that came out of that is that American citizens overall started to place more of an emphasis in understanding where their food came from. Particularly as we began to see supply chain shortages in grocery stores. That occurrence provided a great opportunity for more broader emphasis on local and regional food systems and provided an opportunity for not only new and beginning farmers to come in, but also existing farmers who had interest in scaling up and interest in crop diversification. It provided an excellent opportunity for us to begin the process of investing in those individuals to serve some of that market core for local communities. And so, there are immense number of opportunities that exist there.

Maria Graziani (23:53): We brought up a lot of important themes during this episode. We can't lose sight of what makes food systems resilient and also not lose sight of the data that came out of the pandemic that shortened supply chains, crop diversification and funding mechanisms that support both of these changes are and will be needed to ensure that all Americans are fed daily and also through any disaster.

Kolia Souza (24:20): Coming out of this conversation, Maria, there's two big themes that are really top of mind for me, interruption and recalibration.

Maria Graziani (24:30): Right, the system needs disruptions in both technology and policy that allow for recalibration, that builds resilience, and those disruptions must incorporate actions that are inclusive of all the farmers who grow food and of all the people who eat food.

Kolia Souza (24:49): And I think about interruption and recalibration in two ways. COVID was a type of interruption that forced a recalibration of our food supply chain. I think no one would disagree with that. Then there is this idea of intentional interruption. Rachel talked about interrupted systems, industrial ways that were interrupted by modern policy and systems that has produced some inequitable results, including lack of access to capital and even health opportunities.

Maria Graziani (25:19): So we can't take our eyes off the past and what policy and actions are still harmful and get them out of our system for good.

Kolia Souza (25:29): Same thing with recalibration. Assuming that strategic recalibration is more proactive than reactive, then we'd need to come to a shared understanding of what the issue that needs resolution truly is. In policy terms, it's about framing. Marcus and Rachel talked about farmers as entrepreneurs and food sovereignty as models. The underlying question then is how are our food and ag values determined? Think about the difference between food as commodity versus food as medicine. Each of these value positions changes the systems model, including access to financing, for example.

Maria Graziani (26:10): And so, then simultaneously, recalibrate the system with policy implementation and funding practices that incorporate human bio and systems diversity steeped in an adopted national framework in a common language.

Kolia Souza (26:29): I could not have brought that together any better, Maria. So with that, it brings us to the end of this series, collaboration with the Federation of American Scientists. Maria, any parting thoughts to leave with our audience?

Maria Graziani (26:44): Of course, I want to leave listeners with as many resources as possible. It's kind of hard on a podcast because we have to say the entire length of the URL. That said, I think it's easiest to make a recommendation that is resource heavy instead of sending everyone or telling everyone three dozen websites. But if you are needing to understand the topics we discussed here today further, I recommend two documents, an annual publication out of Michigan State Center for Regional Food Systems, which is called the Annotated Bibliography of Structural Racism in the Food System. There is a ton of resources within that document and from the USDA, the Local and Regional Food Systems Resilience Playbook, which just came out this year, which was developed out of multiple years of pandemic funding and really is a wonderful guide to looking at resilience in food systems.

Kolia Souza (27:50): We hope that you have enjoyed this episode. You can find all REAL Talks episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify. Please share this podcast and check out our other episodes. REAL Talks is a podcast created by the Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems. The series is hosted by Kolia Souza and produced by Melissa Hill. The podcast is supported by funding from the W.K Kellogg Foundation. This episode is made possible in part through the Food Systems Impact Fellowship from the Federation of American Scientists. You can find out more about FAS at fas.org.

Reaching for Equity in All Lives (REAL) Talks

REAL Talks is a podcast created by the Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems. The series is hosted by Kolia Souza and Maria Graziani, and produced by Melissa Hill. The podcast is supported by funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. This episode is made possible in part through the Food Systems Impact Fellowship from the Federation of American Scientists. You can find out more about FAS at fas.org.

You can find all REAL Talks episodes on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Podcasts Please share this podcast and check out our other episodes.