In a recent interview with the Cable News Network (CNN), the Founder and President of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA), John Boyd, Jr., says that the agricultural policies of the administration of Donald Trump are proving to be a devastating blow to his constituency.

Boyd, a fourth-generation farmer and producer of soybeans, wheat and corn, said to CNN that they have not been included in the discussions surrounding the administration’s tariffs regime which is making it impossible for him and other agriculturalists to remain in business.

He described the tariffs imposed by Trump as being tantamount to a 135% tax on soybean producers making it impossible for farmers such as himself to obtain credit from financial institutions to purchase agricultural inputs during planting season. Although the Trump White House claims that the enactment of huge tariffs through executive orders would improve the United States economy while in reality the opposite is taking place.

The key word in the opening months of the Trump administration is “uncertainty.” Stock markets in the U.S., Western Europe and Asia have dropped precipitously. In the U.S., reports indicate that approximately 7-11 trillion dollars were lost between February and April.

Many of the agricultural products grown by U.S.-based farmers will not have export markets if Trump continues the current trajectory. The decline in markets, the layoffs in the federal government, steel and automotive industries, does not portend well for the plight of the working class.

African American farmers, having suffered tremendously over the decades, know that the present crisis will result in more people losing their land and capacity to remain in the agricultural industry. During the first Trump administration due to his previously failed tariffs program, the government announced a partial bailout of famers in 2018.

However, Boyd said during the CNN interview that there are always difficulties for African American farmers to collect on financial commitments made by the federal government. Boyd noted that the Department of Agriculture has a history of finding ways to not pay African American farmers over the course of decades. Although there have been “settlements” agreed upon by the federal courts related to discriminatory class-action lawsuits, there were denials and delays related to the eligibility of African Americans to receive compensation mandated by the judiciary.

A Transformative Life as an Advocate for African American Farmers

Boyd said in another interview in the journal Farm Progress in late February that he never set out to become an advocate for the African American people in the rural areas of the South. His farming experience began with his sharecropping family in Boydton, Virginia, located near the border with North Carolina. The area he grew up in was a former plantation where the slave owners bossed his ancestors.

Born during the era of the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1960s, Boyd, now 59-years-old, said the social situation of his family during this period was representative of the legacy of African enslavement. He said that when the white family living in the former slave plantation house wanted something done, his family had to respond.

Eventually, he was able to buy land owned by an African American family which was ending their lives as farmers. This occurred after he visited the White House under then President Jimmy Carter as a high school student. He spoke with Carter during the visit, being surprised as the only African American students participating in the class trip to Washington, D.C.

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February 6, 2025 Farmer Gale Livingstone alongside volunteers Sydney Harris, Lewis Taylor, Emmani Phillips-Quigley and Jimi Palmer plant seeds at Deep Roots Farm in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Photo by Dee Dwyer for NPR

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After a failed attempt to become a professional athlete, Boyd returned to Virginia to farm, acquiring his first piece of land. Boyd noted that things only went downhill after becoming an agriculturalist.

The local U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) office in Boyd’s area routinely refused to extend credit to African American farmers. He personally witnessed the openly racially discriminatory practices of the USDA.

In subsequent years, he spoke at a state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) conference where he described the horrendous circumstances surrounding African American farmers. Eventually during the 1990s, other Black farmers would join the struggle resulting in the formation of the NBFA. Boyd appeared on several television news programs including 60 Minutes. This exposure would lead to a national movement to save African American land and farmers.

The Farm Progress article said of the situation during the 1990s under the administration of President Bill Clinton that:

“The continued protests had caught the attention of then President Bill Clinton. He offered to meet with Boyd and other Black farmer advocates. That half-hour meeting, which included other government officials, turned into a three-hour marathon. At its conclusion, Clinton agreed to speed up investigations into discrimination at USDA. He also enacted a moratorium on farm foreclosures pending an investigation into civil rights violations. That moratorium applied not just to Black famers, but white ones as well. ‘That’s the day that changed my life,’ Boyd says. ‘The moratorium saved them from selling my farm. That was the only thing to save me’.” 

A class-action lawsuit by tens of thousands of African American farmers resulted in a federal consent judgment awarding monetary damages to impacted families. Nonetheless, problems persisted as the flawed process for settlement payments led to further delays and denials.

The Pigford Settlement of the 2000s did not address many of the concerns of African American farmers. There was a time period put in place to apply for compensation and a cap on the amount allocated by the U.S. Congress to pay out settlement to farmers. See this.

Thousands of African American farmers were left out of the Pigford Settlement and continued to lose their land. Then Senator Barack Obama sponsored a bill that would address these concerns. This bill helped his campaign by making him known in the rural South.

NBFA President John Boyd was even interviewed for a cabinet position as Secretary of Agriculture as the Obama administration prepared to take office in 2008. However, the position went to Tom Vilsack, who in 2010 fired veteran Civil Rights Movement activist Shirley Sherrod from a position in the Agricultural Department. Shirley Sherrod, the wife of activist Charles Sherrod of Southwest Georgia, was well known throughout the U.S.

Sherrod was terminated because she addressed the plight of African American farmers as a by-product of the institutionally racist system in the U.S. Sherrod’s father had been killed when she was a girl due to a conflict with a neighboring white farmer over cattle grazing on their land.

After the public uproar over her termination, she was offered another job in the administration which she declined. These developments were a reflection of the unwillingness of the federal government under both Democrats and Republicans to compensate African American farmers and their communities in the South.

When former President Joe Biden ran for office against Trump in 2020, he made enormous promises to African Americans related to police misconduct, voting rights along with improving economic opportunities. However, legislation such as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and a renewed Voting Rights bill to restore its enforcement provisions struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, were never passed despite the Democratic Party dominance in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the first two years of the Biden administration.

Conditions Continue to Decline for African American Farmers

By the time Biden and later Vice President Kamala Harris ran for re-election in 2024, the lack of enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket along with voter suppression tactics, resulted in the second ascendancy of Trump. Boyd spoke out about the lack of progress for African American farmers under the Biden-Harris administration.

According to the same above-mentioned report from Farm Progress in regard to Boyd’s views on Biden and Trump:

“In 2023, he announced he would not support President Biden’s re-election bid. He felt the president had failed to adequately protect farmers from foreclosures. He condemned Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act for not including sufficient debt relief for Black and minority farmers. He also blasted Biden for allocating billions to help Ukraine while, in his estimation, not doing enough to help Black farmers. Recent events have brought even greater concerns. In February, Boyd declared a ‘state of emergency’ for Black farmers and ranchers. He believes President Trump’s decision to shutter USAID will threaten millions of farmers. He also worries cuts to various diversity initiatives at USDA could undo progress Black farmers have made over the past few decades.”

Consequently, the African American people must build their own independent movement aimed at security their long-advocated demands for full equality and self-determination. Since the early 20th century, African Americans have lost an estimated 15 million acres of land. See this.

This massive land theft is due to numerous factors including outright forced removals, legal seizures resulting from delinquent taxes and other debts and the overall atmosphere of institutional racism and national oppression in the South and other regions of the U.S. Efforts to reclaim land and housing for African Americans will in all likelihood require a revolution against the system of capitalism.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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