The “Socially Disadvantaged Farmer and Rancher" and the COVID 19 Relief Bill
“The white man may get me at last, but I will have good times until then. You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard tack, and a little sugar and coffee.”
By Jim Mundorf
The COVID Relief Bill is set to be signed into law today and it has a whole section on agriculture. The part that has a lot of people scratching their heads is the, Farm Loan Assistance For Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers, where it states: The Secretary shall provide a payment in an amount up to 120 percent of the out standing indebtedness of each socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher as of January 1, 2021, to pay off the loan directly or to the socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher. The bill goes on to explain that the loans to be paid off are USDA farm loans.
$4 Billion tax payer dollars will be spent to pay off loans of, “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.
What all taxpayers need to understand is that farming operating loans are not like your typical car loan. For some farmers they can easily be for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don’t know exactly how paying off 120% of a loan works. I must be some kind of a slacker, since when it comes to loan payments I usually quit at 100%. I have to assume that paying off 120% of the loan means that the loan gets paid off and 20% of the amount paid goes back to the borrower. This means that the people who are the most in debt, will be receiving the largest cash payments that will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. It also means that if you fit into the socially disadvantaged group and you paid your loan off before Jan. 1, you get nothing. Congrats on being responsible.
Outreach and assistance
According to the COVID Relief Bill, “The term ‘‘socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher’’ has the meaning given the term in section 2501(a) of the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and 16 Trade Act of 1990.” That is the 1990 Farm Bill and section 2501(a) states, “The Secretary of Agriculture shall provide outreach and technical assistance to encourage and assist socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers to own and operate farms and ranches and to participate in agricultural programs.” Section 2501(a) does not give meaning to the term. What it does do, if you read the entire section, is show that 31 years ago, $10 million per year of tax payer dollars were used to provide outreach and assistance to, “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.” In fact, the COVID Relief Bill, lead me to go through all farm bills since 1990 and found that all of them, except 1996, give out tens of millions of dollars per year for outreach and assistance to the socially disadvantaged. The most recent, 2018, gives $50 million per year for outreach and assistance. I added them all up and over the past 31 years I came up with $545 million tax payer dollars paid out for outreach and assistance to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.
If you continue to read the 1990 Farm Bill you will end up finding the definition to, socially disadvantaged group, which is, “a group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities.” That isn’t a very clear definition of who the socially disadvantaged are, but don’t worry because another billion dollars is being paid for, “outreach and assistance” to community based organizations. I am going to guess part of that outreach and assistance will be helping the members of those community based organizations fill out their applications to get their 120%.
Community Based Organizations
Where does the money go? The farm bills all have similar wording, describing how the USDA is to give out, “Grants and Contracts” to “Community based organizations” that, “has demonstrated experience in providing agricultural education or other agriculturally related services to socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.” Knowing what I know about, “community based organizations” that are good at getting grants and contracts from the government, combined with 120% loan payments showing up randomly in a relief bill that has no clear definition of who is, “socially disadvantaged” has lead me to a number of questions. The organizations that have been given hundreds of millions to assist the socially disadvantaged, will those same community based organizations be helping the socially disadvantaged to apply and receive their loan payments? Do these community based organizations charge membership fees to the socially disadvantaged that they help? Do they also ask for donations, from the disadvantaged who get their loans paid? Do the community based organizations use membership fees and donations to help fund political campaigns of the politicians that helped write the COVID Relief bill? These are all important questions that I believe tax payers of every race and ethnicity deserve to know the answers to.
I am going to take a wild guess and say that community based organizations could also be called lobbyist organizations. Meaning that more than $5 billion tax payer dollars that has just been paid out to these groups and their members has to be one of the largest pay off of lobbyists in the history of the United States. Does that sound like something that deserves some attention or investigation from the media? (Insert cricket sounds)
Is the USDA Racist?
If this is not an incredibly corrupt fleecing of the American taxpayer in order to enrich lobbyist groups, then there can only be one other explanation, and that is that the USDA is one of the most corrupt and disgustingly racist organizations in the country. According the politicians the 120% loan payments are included in this bill because of the decades of discrimination by the USDA, against the socially disadvantaged. Well, thanks to this bill we now know that the USDA has been given tens of millions of dollars for the past 3 decades, to give outreach and assistance for those same socially disadvantaged. Who is working at the USDA that is taking this money and still discriminating? Why are they not fired? If the American tax payer now has to pay off loans because of discrimination, should all USDA employees that work on approving farm loans be fired and replaced to insure this never happens again?
The 2008 Farm Bill established the Minority Farmer Advisory Committee, as well as the Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Group. The 2014 Farm Bill established the Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Research Center. These groups are part of the USDA and now in 2021 tax payers are required to pay the loans of the people these groups were supposed to be helping. There can only be one conclusion to all this and that is that something is deeply flawed within the USDA.
P.S. In regards to the rest of the COVID Relief Bill, 245 years was a pretty good run, but from this moment on…
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”
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Jim Mundorf- Owner of Lonesome Lands and The Drover House. He also works on his families farm and cattle ranch in Iowa