African-American farmers in trouble: Leslie Goffe reports on the tribulations of African-American farmers in 'God's Own Country'. Harlem is nowhere. (Diaspora: Blacks in USA).

It is not just in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa that whites and blacks are in conflict over land. In the United States, African-Americans are in a life and death struggle with the American government over the future of black farmers.

A dying breed, African-American farmers are fighting an ugly mixture of discrimination by government agencies designed to help keep farmers in business and falling crop prices. These two forces have conspired to drive black farmers off land that many families have owned since the end of slavery.

There were once almost a million black-run farms from Texas to Tennessee. Now barely 20,000 remain.

"In a few years we are not going to have any land," says Jacob Lipscomb, 67, a cattle and pig farmer in southern Virginia, whose run-down 15-acre farm dares back to slavery. His newly-emancipated great-grandfather was released from bondage in 1865 and given a rocky, all hut useless piece of land as a kind of reparation.

"We are the people that have grubbed, and opened up this farmland", adds Jacob, a tall, hungry looking man, whose story of woe and misery on the land echoes that of most of America's remaining black farmers.

"We are not able to buy land, crops, new animals, or equipment," Jacob complains. "The land is going back to the white man."

Unable to get money from the federal agencies set up to assist America's farmers, Jacob's farm began to falter. He turned to a commercial bank that charged exorbitant interest rates. It was not long before the bank foreclosed on his farmhouse and took a parcel of his land, as well. But he still refuses to leave. He dragged a rusty, three-room trailer home onto his remaining slice of land, where he now lives with 10 long-horn cows, a couple of chicken, two pigs, and his wife, Daisy.

"We are the ones that c[eared all of this land and got these farms going, and now we can't farm ourselves," he says.

Discrimination

Gary Grant, president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association says he and other black farmers have been systematically denied federal farm loans, disaster aid, and other assistance routinely made available to white farmers. Grant says measures must be put in place to root out racism in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) offices across rural America.

"Our loan applications are processed anywhere from 90 to 120 days longer than whites," complains Grant, a North Carolina pig and chicken farmer. "We receive about $21,000 less for the same acreage than a white farmer receives to operate, we get our loans in the summer when our crops ought to be coming our of the ground. We want the suckers who do this, the redneck bigots, our of the way so that we can operate like any other farmer in this country.

And, in what seemed a rare victory, the USDA acknowledged recently that it was guilty of discrimination, and offered to settle a lawsuit brought against it by a group of black farmers.

But, black farmers are not happy. The $375m USDA offer consists of a tax-free cash payment of $50,000 to farmers whose loans were delayed or denied, and the writing-off of debts owed the government. But this package falls far short of the $2 billion that black farmers are demanding. They refused the USDA offer, saying it was too small a price for the suffering they had endured.

But Eva Clayton, an African-American Congresswoman from North Carolina, says the government offer is a step in the right direction, and the farmers would be foolish to refuse it.

"Is it complete? Of course it is not," says the Congresswoman. "Will it give relief to thousands of farmers? Yes, it absolutely will. But it will not make many of these farmers whole, so they have a right to try and make it better. The farmers who are suffering are not only suffering from discrimination. That's the extra burden. They are suffering from a lack of markets, a lack of access to credit."

Another African-American politician, Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana, was also cheered by the government's settlement offer.

"I hope our discussions allow us to develop strategies that ensure future economic empowerment by stimulating African-American involvement in US agribusiness, exploring the lucrative international marketplace and by developing meaningful initiatives for a resurgence of Black farmers."

The USDA says the $50,000 it offered the black farmers is the best ever in a class-action lawsuit. With times tough for all farmers -- black and white -- Erica Hovland of the National Farmer's Union in Washington says the offer is nothing to sneeze at. Though some white farmers sympathise, she says most believe global economic factors are to be blamed, not racism.

Bad year

Last year was one of the worst years ever for family farmers because of a brutal combination of low prices, widespread crop diseases, a string of natural disasters, and the Asian financial crisis that damaged exports.

And as if that was not enough, the USDA has just published an outlook which shows net farm income is expected to decline another 8% this year and continue to fall till 2004.

African-American farmers say these conditions have been especially difficult on them, coming as they do with a cocktail of systematic discrimination which leaves them little opportunity to succeed.

African-Americans have an ambivalent relationship with the land which their ancestors were brought from Africa as slaves to work. While many remained in the south after they were emancipated, renting or owning small plots of land, hundreds of thousands of others headed North at the turn of the century drawn by the promise of greater freedom and opportunities there.

But in many cases, African-Americans simply swapped difficult rural conditions for tougher urban ones. Ralph Ellison, the distinguished African-American writer, wrote in his 1948 essay, Harlem Is Nowhere, that African-Americans who fled the South found themselves in a kind of limbo between their new urban, slum conditions and their ancient folk sensibilities.

Farmer Jacob Lipscomb tried the city, for a while, and did not like it. He longed for his home, and land that had been in his family for almost 150 years.

"I don't like the rat race. I like being out in the wide open spaces," Jacob says, pointing to the big, empty sky around his Virginia farm. "I'm free here on this farm. Free of being discriminated against, free of having to bend to the white man for everything, just free."

Better than Harlem?

Though not quite free of the white man, and his domination over their lives, it is, in a way, true that blacks on the land are freer than those in the cities.

While it is true that both suffer institutionalised racial discrimination, it is clear that those in the countryside have a certain peace of mind that comes only from owning a significant piece of the earth beneath their feet.

"It's just like the Indians were moved to the reservations," Jacob says. "It's like blacks are being moved to the cities, and off the land. We are not going to have any land. We won't own anything if we don't do something about it. In a few years we're not going to have any land."

And, though their problems spring from institutional discrimination, black farmers don't blame the government alone for their plight. They say black leaders have long relegated rural concerns to the back of the burner.

The Rev Maceo Hill, a Virginia preacher and farmer, says the problem is that urban blacks are not interested in the plight of their country cousins. "We've been looking at land slipping away for years, but I think most black people could care less," he growls, as though he were speaking from his Sunday pulpit.

"Most people who migrated to the cities came off small black farms, and most decided when they left they were never coming back to the rural area. It is not until recent years, when housing in the cities became a problem, and people thought about retiring, that they started looking to coming back into the rural areas. But by that time most of the land they used to own had already been bought up and lost. I don't think black folks across the country are that concerned about the black farmer. And, I'm willing to bet you, most black leaders could care less."

The Rev Dr Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a colleague of the late Dr Martin Luther King Jnr, admits that urban concerns have dominated the national black political agenda.

"Since we moved to the cities," says Lowery, "that's where the advocacy has been focused. It's natural that since the urban situation presents such an aggravated problem, it has been the wheel that squeaked the loudness, and therefore got most attention. But it is divine providence that the farmer is now getting attention.

Future generations

If black farms are to remain in black hands, it is going to take a commitment by the young generation of African-Americans to stay on the land. To try and win them over, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association recently set up a youth chapter, led by Marcus Bernard, 22.

"If we do get a fair and jut settlement, it will show that in this country there is justice and some equality," says Bernard, a college student at a black-run agricultural college in the American South.

"It's not that the youth don't care, but they have seen the stress and strains put on their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles by the USDA, and they don't want to go through the same thing. This is why they have turned away from the land. If they see a way, they will turn back to the land."

The USDA has promised to institute a host of anti-discriminatory measures, including the training of managers in civil rights, establishing a loan programme for socially disadvantaged farmers, and reserving seats on loan application committees for minorities. But farmer Jacob Lipscomb thinks it might be too late to save a farm that has been in his family since the end of slavery 134 years ago.

"I hate to say it but I am afraid I'm gonna be the last on this property as a farmer," Jacob says, stifling a tear. "This might be the end of it, and this might be the end for black farmers everywhere.