As debt relief remains frozen, Black farmers fear foreclosure. From The New York Times.
WASHINGTON — For Brandon Smith, a fourth-generation cattle rancher from Texas, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that President Joe Biden signed into law nearly a year ago was long-awaited relief.The legislation included $4 billion of debt forgiveness for Black and other “socially disadvantaged” farmers, a group that has endured decades of discrimination from banks and the federal government.
But the entire initiative has been stymied amid lawsuits from white farmers and groups representing them that questioned whether the government could offer debt relief based on race. The law was intended to help remedy years of discrimination that nonwhite farmers have endured, including land theft and the rejection of loan applications by banks and the federal government. The program designated aid to about 15,000 borrowers who receive loans directly from the federal government or have their bank loans guaranteed by the USDA.
Leonard Jackson, a cattle farmer in Muskogee, Oklahoma, received such a letter despite being told by the USDA that he did not need to make loan payments because his $235,000 in debt would be paid off by the government. The letter was jarring for Jackson, whose father, a wheat and soybean farmer, had his farm equipment foreclosed on by the government years earlier. The prospect of losing his 33 cows, house and trailer was unfathomable.
The Agriculture Department said that it was required by law to send the warnings but that the government had no intention of foreclosing on farms, citing a moratorium on such action that was put in place early last year because of the pandemic. After The New York Times inquired about the foreclosure letters, the USDA sent borrowers who had received notices another letter late last month telling them to disregard the foreclosure threat.
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