Race and Injustice in the Food System

June 2020

by Chelsie Kolberg, MPH, RD, Nutrition Technical Advisor

I want to start by recognizing the unprecedented nature of these times and the magnitude and range of emotions you may be feeling. We may have seen protests before, but we’ve never seen them during a pandemic. We may have heard about the Black Lives Matter movement before, but the intensity of this response to police brutality seems stronger than ever. Like you, I am wondering where I fit into all of this. Since I have a platform to share nutrition topics with you, I’d like to take this opportunity to focus on the past and present situation of our food system as it relates to race and social justice. I took a deep dive into this research and what I have learned in the past 2 weeks has shown me that no system is untouched by our history; race and food have been inextricably linked since before the founding of our country. The laws and policies we use today were founded on the original sin of slavery, and unless we face our history and work toward breaking that foundation to lay a new and equitable one, we will be doomed to repeat our past mistakes.

Please come along this journey with me as we explore our country’s history through the lens of food. As participants in the food system, we play an integral role in deciding its future.

Where to begin? The beginning, of course

Since the first European ships touched shore, settlers have forced Native Americans into smaller sections of land. Today, Native American reservations make up 2.3% of total US land. Throughout this restructuring, the food system among Native Americans changed dramatically. Their traditional cultural relationship with food was altered and they were forced to comply with US operating systems causing them to become reliant on government food aid. Today, most Reservations receive commodity foods (fruit juices, canned vegetables, oil, cereals, dairy) from the USDA which has led to an increase in hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease among Native American people.

After seizing the Native American’s land, Europeans began commerce of human beings to fuel the agricultural industry in the American South which funded the Industrial Revolution. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment ended legal slavery (“except as a punishment for a crime” which makes free prison labor legal) and brought about sharecropping. Sharecropping meant a freed slave would work the farm for no cash payment but would receive a share of the crops produced. During this short period of the Reconstruction Era, black Americans saved enough to purchase over 12 million acres of farmland by 1900.

This success was short-lived when Jim Crow laws were introduced. These laws were designed to maintain the pre-amendment power structures between white and non-white Americans by maintaining separate rules and processes for black people. White landowners were charging higher interest making it impossible for black workers to save money and pay off debt. Black Americans were also kept from purchasing necessary tools and resources to maintain their farms. African Americans once owned 16 million acres of farmland but after decades of Jim Crow laws, that number dropped to 2 million acres. 

These racial inequities appeared again during WWII when the US labor force was fighting overseas. Japanese-Americans farmers were forced off their land and held in internment camps resulting in land loss. With a vacuum in farm labor, the Mexican Farm Labor Program Agreement of 1942 imported Mexican poor workers to keep the US food system functioning. This made immigrant labor cheap and shaped the current composition of food system workers. The LatinX community currently makes up 85% of the labor force but holds only 2% of management positions. Today, white workers hold nearly 75% of the managerial positions in the food system. And in similar positions, white food workers’ average incomes are $25,024 while workers of color average $19,349. 

A look at recent history

Now that we’re all familiar with the history of Native Americans and slavery, what about the agricultural history of the last few decades? The USDA was responsible for much of the 14 million acre land loss that took place during the Jim Crow era. Their Commission on Small Farms admitted in 1998 that “the history of discrimination at the US Department of Agriculture…is well-documented" - not against white farmers but African-American, Native American and other minorities who were pushed off their land by decades of racially biased laws and practices.” 

This admission of racial practices is supported by numbers reflecting the loss of land. In 1920, 1 out of 7 farms were black-run, but by 1992, that number dropped to 1 out of 100. In 1983, President Reagan cut USDA budgets resulting in the elimination of the USDA Office of Civil Rights. USDA officials admitted they “simply threw discrimination complaints in the trash without ever responding to or investigating them.” After mounting evidence, the government agreed to a $2.3 billion settlement (the largest civil rights settlement in history) in 1999. 

The USDA was involved in another racial scandal when, in 2012, its Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, misrepresented data to show an improvement in discriminatory complaints. An in-depth, 2-year investigation showed that while the USDA was claiming progress in handling claims of discrimination, it was still actively involved in obstructing justice for black farmers. Additionally, the federal government currently performs almost no oversight to guard against discrimination within the Farm Credit System, which provides 41% of all agricultural loans. With little protections against discrimination, it is no surprise that black farmers lost nearly 90% of their land in recent decades. Today, half of all government farm money goes to the top 9% of farms, “whose operators are 97% male and 99% white.”

Farm to plastic fork

We can clearly see how racism has impacted the ownership of land in agriculture, but how does it impact the other end of the food chain - access and consumerism? ‘Food desert’ is a term used to describe an urban area in which it is difficult to find and afford quality fresh food. Food available in these deserts are highly processed with low nutrient quality. Research from John Hopkins shows that black and Hispanic neighborhoods are more likely to be labeled as “food deserts” when compared to their white neighborhoods of equal economic status.  This segregation has led some food researchers to start using the term “food apartheid” rather than “food desert” as the term ‘desert’ suggests a natural environment but the disparities resulting from our food system are completely man-made. In fact, of the 50 million food insecure people in the US, only 11% are white. “One consequence of diet-related disparities is that groups that experience these disparities also tend to have higher incidence, morbidity, and mortality rates and poorer survival for many diet-related chronic diseases and conditions, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, cancer, type II diabetes, and obesity.” This is reflected in the prevalence of disease. Cancer incidence and mortality rates are highest in African Americans; type 2 diabetes is considered an epidemic among Native Americans; and metabolic syndrome, obesity, and cardiovascular disease are prevalent among Hispanics.

A recipe for success

There is good news in all of this! These topics are being discussed like never before (you’re reading a blurb about racism in the food system right now) and there are leaders in the field looking to create a more equitable food system. The Institute for Food and Development Policy (aka Food First) works to end injustices that cause hunger through research, education, and action. They say “ensuring equity of access to healthy food, resources and dignified, living wage jobs, would go a long way towards “fixing” the food system.” Advocates for an equitable food system include Malik Yakini and Leah Penniman. Malik Yakini is an activist who educates on the history of racism in our food system and discusses solutions to these problems. Leah Penniman created Soul Fire Farm which provides agriculture training and fresh food to minorities, refugees, and low-income community members. She describes the Afro-indigenous roots of farming and how many farming techniques we use today originated from African culture. (Did you know George Washington Carver pioneered crop rotation and refused chemical products in favor of natural crop protection methods?) 

You can be a part of the change too! Food Councils are community-based coalitions to promote more resilient food systems. They exist across the country and you can get involved in your local North Carolina Food Council.

Do a quick google search and you’ll find several resources pertaining to race and injustice in our food system. I don’t have time to review it all here, but I hope I have whet your appetite to explore. May we never feel satiated with the status quo!

Resources to get you going

Videos

• Leah Penniman Keynote 2020: Uprooting racism in agriculture
• Malik Yakini: Food, Race, and Justice at Bioneers Conference
• Regina Bernhard-Carreno: The underlying racism of America’s food system at TEDxManhattan
• The Doctor’s Farmacy with Mark Hyman, MD: How our food system acts as an invisible form of oppression

Articles

• Food First: Dismantling Racism in the Food System
• The Counter: How USDA distorted data to conceal decades of discrimination against black farmers
• The Nation: The Real Story of Racism at the USDA
• National Young Farmers Coalition: Racial Inequity in the Food System
• Roots of Change: Food Justice & Racism in the Food System
• Civil Eats: New Research Explores the Ongoing Impact of Racism on the U.S. Farming Landscape
• The Guardian: Food apartheid: the root of the problem with America’s groceries

Podcasts

• Flipping the Table
• The Future of Food
• Bioneers
• Delicious Revolution
• The Table Underground w/Tagan Engel
• Food Warriors
• Just Food
• Food for Thought

Resources

• National Young Farmers Coalition
• NC Food Council 
• Agriculture Justice Project
• Food First
• HEAL Food Alliance
• Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy
• Inter-Faith Food Shuttle

For more information, please contact the author of this piece

Chelsie Kolberg, MPH, RD, Nutrition Technical Advisor

Sources used:

https://thecounter.org/usda-black-farmers-discrimination-tom-vilsack-reparations-civil-rights/

https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2014/spring/racial-food-deserts/#:~:text=Research%20shows%20food%20deserts%20more%20abundant%20in%20minority%20neighborhoods,-Image%20%3A%20Whitney%20Sherman&text=When%20comparing%20communities%20with%20similar,stores%20than%20their%20white%20counterparts.

https://foodfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/DR1Final.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2729116/

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/wa/people/employees/?cid=nrcs144p2_036539#:~:text=Jim%20Crow%20laws%20gave%20white,needed%20farm%20and%20household%20supplies.

https://www.youngfarmers.org/2019/02/racial-inequity/

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/real-story-racism-usda/

https://www.fs.fed.us/people/tribal/tribexd.pdf

https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=33#:~:text=American%20Indian%2FAlaska%20Native%20adults,die%20from%20diabetes%2C%20in%202017.