A series of meetings later this week in Columbia are designed to help explain recent court rulings that affect black farmers.
Thomas Burrell, president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, will provide updates from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at John the Baptist Missionary Baptist Church, located at 500 Lumberton Road.
The Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association is a non-profit organization established in 1997 by Burrell, a farmer from Covington, Tenn., to address concerns of black farmers about discrimination from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“There are several issues that affect our members,” Burrell said Monday. “The president set aside billions of dollars for soybean producers affected by tariffs. There have also been recent rulings in lawsuits against companies such as Syngenta, which had a $1.5 billion decision against it. We will also be talking about President Trump’s rural agenda.”
The meetings will also discuss a recent Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the association.
“We had a lawsuit against the USDA that could benefit tens of thousands of farmers who were denied access for filing claims in another lawsuit against the USDA,” Burrell said. “There are four or five issues we will discuss. The rural property initiative ought to include minority landowners, farmers and ranchers.”
According to Burrell, the organization is not only comprised of black farmers, but black female and Hispanic farmers as well. He said the issues affect many in Mississippi.
“Mississippi and South Carolina are what we call Black Belt states,” he said. “There is a lot of poverty, unemployment, substandard housing and many more issues facing minority farmers. We want to explain the lawsuits and the programs. They only have until Sept. 1 to sign up at local USDA offices.”
Burrell was one of the first black farmers to engage in a battle against the USDA in 1981. The 69-year-old Tennessee native gained support from other black farmers and staged protests, sit-ins and public rallies at local USDA offices in his native home and other counties. The demonstrations sparked worldwide media attention and later involved the black farmer’s class action lawsuit of 1997; the lawsuits provided more than $5 billion in compensation to black farmers and other minority farmers, including Native Americans., Hispanics, female farmers and ranchers all over the country.
