There's been a number of pieces relating to black farmers recently. Some are keyed to the new administration and controversy over whether Vilsack is a good appointment. Several quote statements from different black farmer organizations. There seems to be more these days than there were when the original Pigford suit was filed.
I found this Politico piece interesting, especially including this paragraph:
Horne said her data shows there was a 57 percent decline in the number of Black farmers in North Carolina from 1954 to 1969, with the number dropping from 22,625 to 9,687. During the same period, farms operated by white farmers dropped from 201,819 to 106,275 — a 47 percent decline.
It's the first time I've seen a direct comparison of this kind. Maybe somewhere there's an economist who has gone a bit deeper into the statistics. What I'd particularly like to see is a breakdown by farm size. I suspect the distribution of black farms was proportionally weighted towards smaller farmers, and I suspect the farms which survived were proportionally weighted towards the larger farmers. If that was true, what should one conclude?
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