Throughout the history of the U.S., African Americans have predominantly been employed in the various facets of the agriculture industry, largely as the labor force.
However, since the Great Migration—the movement of Black people from the agriculture-based South, to the more industrial North that took place from 1910 to 1970— many African Americans have pursued non-agriculture-based careers.
John Boyd Jr., a fourth-generation Black farmer who owns Boyd Farms—based in Baskerville, Virginia— said less African Americans pursuing agricultural work is a big mistake.
“We [as a race] are in big trouble,” Boyd, 59, told the Informer on Feb. 15. “The average age of the Black farmer is 61 years old. Kids have not caught farming fever. It is sad to see older Black farmers work hard to build legacies that they can pass on to their children, but the children are not interested. The next generation needs to step up.”
Boyd’s company consists of three farms on 1,500 acres, where he grows soybean, corn and wheat and presently raises 150 beef cattle. In the past, he has grown tobacco and bred chickens.
Boyd is a nationally known civil rights activist on behalf of Black farmers, serving as the founder and CEO of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA), started in 1995.
Since then, Boyd has led marches in the District to Capitol Hill and the White House. Further, he has filed lawsuits in the federal courts advocating for Black farmers to receive their fair share of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) financing, which has overwhelmingly gone to white farming entrepreneurs.
As the leader of the NBFA, Boyd has been part of the transition team for then-Virginia Governor-elect Tim Kaine (D), former Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore’s Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, and President Bill Clinton’s (D) tobacco board. It was widely reported in 2021 that Boyd was in the running to be President Biden’s agriculture secretary.
“Anyone and everyone who is either an ‘underserved’ farmer or rancher owes Mr. Boyd a huge debt,” said Ricardo Salvador in 2016, when the NBFA founder was honored with the 2016 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. “He is an inspiration for his long record of persistence and obtaining historic results.”
The Skinny on Black Farmers
While the number of Black-operated farms declined 8% between 2017 and 2022, according to the USDA’s “Census of Agriculture,” there are still thousands of Black farmers across the United States.
According to the USDA data’s “Black Producers,” the U.S. had 46,738 farmers who identified as Black, either alone or in combination with another race. These Black farmers accounted for 1.4% of the country’s 3.4 million farmers, and they lived and farmed primarily in east Texas and the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states.
Despite the decrease in Black farmers, the amount of land they own has increased.
Black farmers operated 5,323,654 acres, up 14% from 2017 and 0.6% of the U.S. total. In Texas, with more Black farmers than any other state, African Americans accounted for 3% of the state’s total.
Most Black-operated farms (84%)—similarly to all U.S. farms (70%)—had fewer than 180 acres with the average size of African American farms at 163 acres.
Nearly half (45%) of Black-operated farms specialized in cattle and dairy production in 2022, with almost all in beef.
Seventy percent of Black-operated farms were operated by farmers who own all the land they operate, 22% by farmers who were part owners (own some land and rent some land), and 8% by farmers who rent all land operated.
Black Farm Workers
The overwhelming majority of Black farm workers before 1865 were slaves on Southern farms and plantations, with a smaller number as free employees or farm owners.
After Emancipation and passage of the 13thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution, many Black Americans went into sharecropping arrangements with white landowners, because of their lack of financial assets and land ownership.
African Americans in the agriculture industry tended to be oppressed under land tenure agreements and worked as sharecroppers, tenant farmers and within the crop-lien system. Further, the decades decline of Black Americans in agriculture during the 20th century was not only due to the Great Migration, but the mechanization of the industry that began in the 1940s.
On Jan. 8, the USDA Economic Research Service reported only 3% of farm workers were Black.
Boyd said all his employees are African American but pointed out the preferential treatment that the now majority Latino farm worker workforce gets.
“Black people get little or nothing for their work,” Boyd said. “In some instances, Black farm workers live in homes with no running water. On the other hand, Latinos are treated better. They have housing and credit cards.”
While Boyd understands that many African Americans don’t want the sometimes-grimy work that farming entails, he encourages Black people to get into agriculture.
“One can go to a HBCU that is a land grant institution to study farming,” he said. “And they can get with an older Black farmer to be mentored in the field.”