I'm going to speak some speak some general issues about credit. And Savvy Horn who's an attorney with the land loss prevention project is going to join me, and I think she's lost in the building right now, and she will talk about some land loss issues relating to discrimination both in terms of gender and race discrimination.

What I thought we should do first though is really quickly go around the room and people introduce themselves and where there from just to get a sense since I think there are allot of people here who already know about allot of these issues or have specific questions and that way we can all have a discussion and know who else we are talking to.

[Name announcement inaudible.]

Well, I'm going to start out for a few minutes, and when Savvy gets here turn it over to her to talk it a little bit more broadly about some of the discrimination issues.

The National Family Farm Coalition is an organization that represents family farm and rural advocacy groups, and over the years we've done allot of work working with farmers on trying to make sure that farmers get their rights through debt restructuring, we worked on both the passage and than the implementation of the Agricultural Credit Act of 1987, and through the last sorta five or six years or actually over the last decade when we've been doing this work, there's been an increasing, both, first of all, the work that's been done, allot of the credit work within our coalition has been done by women who've been advocates, who've been working with other women, and have been working with hotlines and referrals, and working through allot of the different issues. And I think for a long timer there's been a real concern about some of the practices within the Department of Agriculture both in terms of broad civil race issues and looking at minority farmers are treated, how both African American and Native American and more recently I think a focus in the response to civil rights issues. How women who are working through either trying to access loans, trying to restructure debt, trying to participate in the process to the committee structure, and allot of different levels, how the programs have been impacting, particularly women both as borrowers and farmers, but also as employees and women have been working within USDA. And I think, it sounded like from when people introduced themselves it's been a fairly, allot of activity or knowledge of what's going on at least with people who are here from the US. A couple years ago, Secretary Glickman made some strong initiatives in terms of forming a civil rights action team within the department doing a series of hearings around the country speaking, some of you may have participated within those hearings of speaking about problems that have occurred both in the delivery of the programs and lengthy appeals, in claims or files where there have been no answers and for allot of us there has been a focus this last year to make sure that some of those recommendations that have been put on the table in fact get implemented. And this is a report that is available from the department on chronicling some of the issues of the '92 recommendations of where the department is right now in terms the implementation of some of those programs. One of the important things is that the department is has been trying to clean up it's act in allot of areas where there has been years and years of either poor implementation, poor administration, they've been sued at allot of levels, particularly in terms of race discrimination issues, which Savvy will talk about a little. Hopefully, they systems have been putting in place in terms of a new office of civil rights, a new civil rights coordinator in the Office of General Counsel will start to set up some systems that will work for all farmers who feel like their not getting their fair rights through department policies. I think that what we saw last year and over the last year and a half was when they instituted the moratorium on foreclosure actions based on a review of all those pending cases. That for the first time, a significant number of women filed and put in question some of the practices that had taken place in the handling of their own loans and in the whole system that was happening throughout the country. Many of those haven't been resolved and their not even clear that their specific gender discrimination cases, but it's up some patterns of practice and patterns of problems in many cases traced back to either decisions made at the local level or at the county level or a lack of accountability from what's happening from one place to another. Some of you in the room who are involved in state committees or county committees I think it would be a good discussion about if you've seen some shift in the last year or two in terms of some of the way that the whole thing has been operating. We know that there has been a major problem in the election process and who votes, and how votes get counted, and who's participating in the creation of the committees. And it varies from state to state and region to region. But I think that there's some slight optimism that there's in fact some new people in place and there's a commitment from the secretary and down the channels to really make a pretty dramatic change in the delivery of the programs. I'm going to spend a few minutes commenting on a few programs that we've got really serious concerns that are on the chopping block or that are not in fact in place in a way that helps family farmers or anyone that is thinking of going into farming actually get started. And one of the biggest concerns is that in '87 Agricultural Credit Act there were some new programs put in place whose goals were really to save the government money and to save farmers when it cost less to restructure or refinance debt than it would be to go through foreclosure or bankruptcy. And that was a law that passed in '87 and basically any of you who were around than know that there were 75,000 - 80,000 farmers who received information from the department about their new rights under the '87 Agricultural Credit Act. And many of us, our organization and others were out there telling people, it's important to use those new rights, work through the system, if your able to cash flow, it's going to be the best situation you can go through as an alternative to bankruptcy and it was something that was a new provision and hopefully would be implemented properly. Well that said, there have been lots of problems with this implementation, but one of the most outrageous things that's happened is that in 1996 when they passed Freedom to farm bill legislation there was one sentence put in the law which we were all aware of but couldn't get it struck out which said, that if you'd ever gotten a write down through either chapter 12 bankruptcy or the 1987 Agricultural Credit Act that you would be from that point on denied access to direct, guaranteed or energy loans. So it was really a drop dead cause for access to FSA assistance. And the numbers are about, they say now that there's about 73,000 farmers who fit into that category. An awful lot of them actually have gone through chapter 12, it's not actually all the Ag Credit Act. But we've been working hard to try to restore that access. Because without it we're in a situation that any farmers around the country who are facing natural disasters, drops in farming come, various problems are basically no longer can even apply to FSA which is historically been the lender of last resort. The place to go when you can't get commercial credit and other kinds of assistance. So that's a really serious concern. And the need to change that provision was a recommendation of the civil rights action team because of the disproportionate impact on low income in minority farmers, it was a recommendation the Small Farm Commission because of the disproportionate impact on small to medium size farmers, and it was a part of the President's budget that came out in February of this year. Right now we have an appropriations bill pending before the House and the Senate that increases direct lending for the first time in years, but we haven't fixed who is actually accessed to the money. So, I bring that up as one example of a legislative issue that unless it gets fixed, affects who really has access to a pool of federal funds the potentially should be there in case of either resolving discrimination complaints from years past their now saying you can't go and reapply or farmers who for a variety of reasons are appealing decisions or trying to access these federal programs. I think that for our organization and allot of others around the country it seems that there's so many issues that one would think, I mean people know that there have been problems in terms of access to credit, there's individual cases of feeling that women as borrowers are treated differently when they go to the offices when their being considered for different programs, but many cases it's anecdotal or it's individual situations there hasn't been nearly the attention on what's been very consistent problems that would form the basis of major law suit or really result in some across the board change in policy and some of that came out during the civil rights hearing process. I think that what our concern is making sure that the programs do get implemented fairly. We have an appeal system that works fairly for all borrowers. And if there's a discrimination claim as part of that appeal that it gets elevated to the level it needs to be so that that part of the complaint gets resolved and doesn't result in nothing happening. Which is what has happened in the last decade in many cases because of the lack of the department having the complaints review staff in place, having a system that was really accountable to a set of mandated and implementing fairly their own programs. I think that some of the experience that we're seeing at least from Washington is that there is a change in attitude and there's a commitment but how that all translates around the country and how that all works in terms of individual delivery of programs is really hard to get a handle of when your here. So I'm going to turn it over to Savvy for a few minutes and than we'll have a discussion and than move into the film. Savvy Horn.

Hi, I'm Savvy Horn from the Last Loss Prevention Project. Land Loss Prevention Project was founded in 1983 by a North Carolina based association of black lawyers. During that period of time their was a drastic decline in the amount of black farmers farming in terms of the acreage, loss within the black farm community, so these lawyers, which rarely happened, get together and decided they were going to form a group that wouldn't charge fees to represent farmers. You know that's always very difficult for lawyers to do. We'll still here, we're still representing farmers across the state of North Carolina, and we have been doing some national work. And we represent all farmers within the state not just black farmers. Unfortunately I can't really get into a gender-based discrimination discussion with regard to black farmers because the way in which racism works within the farm and support community through government services and private lenders they don't get into the gender related discrimination, your just black your black and your going to basically get the same lack of services. So maybe when things change, you know, Kathy and the National Farm Family Coalition we're really pushing for some real changes within USDA. If some of that happens than maybe next time when we meet we can get into some of the more gender discrimination among black female farmers. And that we'd actually have some numbers on that population cause we really don't have good number on black female farmers, we don't really even have good numbers on black farmers because, for allot of reasons. I'm going to read a little, cause I've been in meetings all day with Kathy, so I'm not...And I'm not as erudite because I've just come to this movement. I've been involved in other kinds of movement raising hell but this is the latest on. And I just want to welcome I notice a fellow sister here, I was sitting next to her from Trinidad and Tobago, I just would like to recognize her, I am from the Caribbean, we were farmers, we're no longer farmers because of the pressure on the land for housing in Jamaica, you can't find farmers, so we're basically importing most of our fruits. The land ownership was a positive social force in the African- American community. Black owned farms fed and supported families, sustained communities, and helped thousands of children to go to college. Farming supported a black middle class that was more active in social and political affairs, from the land emerged many civil rights leaders. In the current era of retrenchment on civil rights and equal opportunity when a tax on affirmative action in the job market have become more pervasive a historic base that fed the civil rights movement is disappearing rapidly. In 1920, you had 925,710 African-American farmers, 210,000 of those farmers owned more than 15,000,000 acres of land. There was also 50 black owned banks by 1911. Between 1920-1978 the number of white operated farms declined 63% in the United States, in the same period the number of black farmers in the United States fell from 925,710 to 18,816, a drop of 98%. During the same period the number of Native American farmers, you know Native American or American Indian farmers fell drastically, and of course, we have to recognize their special role in agriculture as being the first farmers on the North American continent. In that population if fell from 1,108 to 600 farmers. And that represents a 45% drop. Of course, there's also problems with how we classify American Indian farmers because some of them aren't recognized as farmers because they farm on reservations so there's that kind of problem. So even within that group we don't have good statistics and we don't even know how many women, you know Indian women are farmers. Today, the land of African-American farmers is quickly sifting away irreversibly and is leaving an entire race of people dispossessed and excluded from the production end of the food system. The consonant first farmers indigenous people who domesticated the crops now comprise 58% of the world food supply have just recently been able to get status and assistant from the government. It was just, and I think in 1994 that we were able to get extension service on American Indian reservations as well as it was back in '94 that an American Indian Extension University was created so you can see the gap. While African-American's have allot to complain we can see how other segments within the minority community have really, really suffered and there's been a historic neglect. And just how compounded our struggles are that we all have to pull together or we're all going to sink. Cause what happens to the least of us will happen to all of us in the end. The causes of such land loss are no mystery, minority farmers have been regularly excluded from purchasing land, denied credit by the government and private lenders, and discriminated against in access to agricultural assistance programs, moreover unscrupulous, manipulative property transfer, including partition and tax sale, which have been occurring throughout the country have depleted and reduced the amount of minority farmers. Within the black community of the south, historically land passed through what is called heir property, so if grandpa had 100 acres it would be willed to all his children and his children would than will it to their children. So what happens often times due to the black migrations that occurred during World War I that wrapped fast forward by World War II with allot of migrations of people from the ancestral lands in the south to the north that you find that people in the north have been alienated from the land base in the south so you find that if people want to get property. They would just look up whose on this title and then they would just start, plot a course to contact these people in north, allot of people have cash flow problems up north and they begin to sell off 1/16 and 1/32 percent interest in property and as soon as enough percentage is acquired you can force a partition sale and often times because their is maybe 100 heirs to this property doesn't make sense so you wind up just loosing the entire property to sale. That has contributed tremendously to black land loss within the south. In response to the great depression the Congress had created the Farmers Home Administration, which is known as FmHA, a USDA agency, now incorporated as the Farm Services Agency, FSA, as the lender of resort for farmers, and I think Kathy was talking about that, and it provided credit where credit was not available in the private sector. However, investigations lead by Congress, lead by the US Commission of Civil Rights, the USDA, and other bodies have been able to document systemic wide-spread discriminatory practices by the FmHA. Discriminatory acts and practices are committed by USDA employees in local offices, and there really well documented. As a matter of fact, in 1996 when I moved to the south, this is my first time living in the south, I became actively involved in the environmental struggles around the hog factories, and than so often in life lead to another, and I ran into some black farmers who were loosing there land. I attended their hearing and the local person who was representing the Farm Services Agency showed up in Federal Court with black farmers loosing 310 acres, in a foreclosure action with a confederate bow-tie. And you could just imagine how chilling that atmosphere was but we had to endure it. Needless to say, the end result is that one of those farmers who was involved in that action, is now one of the lead plaintiff in the class action law suit that was filed against USDA on race based discriminatory grounds. And even that class has not yet been certified so we do not know if these farmers will be able to get a global relief for some these acts committed by local government officials. As Kathy mentioned, there are some changes at USDA. And there are really good reasons to be optimistic. We do have on board a very good and progressive Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman, who is leading the National effort but of course he's still being hampered by the good 'ol boy system and the entrenched racist that are within his department. And of course, we in the activist farm community are really standing behind him and trying to get him to move on legislation and removing members of his department who we have documents on who have actually engage or due to their omission or commission in office supported these racist agendas. So than I wish I could end a high point, I guess the highest point I could end on is that we are now seeing a pulling together within the farm community, with Kathy's group, the National Farmer's Union, and Rural Coalition, and minority farmers, and minority farm workers, and we're all working and forming organizations that would unify our voice in making positive changes. Because if one farmer in the mid-west looses his land, and one farmer in the south looses his land, or one farmer in New Mexico looses his land, it will all impact upon the farming community. So we are in this together and we'll fight together.

I think it makes sense to open up for some questions and discussion and if people could just identify yourselves when you ask the question or make a comment so we get a sense of what the different issues are and where people are coming from.

[Questions inaudible]

In terms of specific women's organizations. I think there's a significant number of national organizations of which there is a relatively large number of women who are active, within our own coalition or farmer's union. In terms of specific issues from the access to direct lending, and some of the other issues, or trying to get the department to be more accountable on issues, I'm not sure how active some of the specific women's organizations are. There are some people here from some other groups that may want to speak up if they've become more actively involved and may want to speak up about it.

I think that's an issue around the country just in terms of people sometimes getting wrong information when they just walk into an office or their told, don't bother there's no money available, instead of going through and applying, and going through the process. When Savvy mentioned some of the problems with statistics and numbers, the discouragement factor is always really hard to quantify and there's not. People can hear wrong information in the paper, and people can hear things from hear say. So one of the things we've encouraged folks over the years to do is to always apply, document your information, to make sure that there's correspondence, that if your told something, that you restate it in writing, and really try and follow the process. And one of the issues that I glossed over was in '87 and again in '92 there were some changes, but a National Appeals Division was created, to try and give farmers a right to really pursue without going through bankruptcy and without going through legal action when they feel there's been an adverse decision against either their loan or a program decision. And one of the problems have been that whole resolving the appeal. And going through appeal system. And in many cases farmers have won an appeals but than they haven't been implemented. And I think that there's a strong feeling about how people are both, some of the appeals process, just sorta the issues, like sensitivity issues at an office or in a group meeting often will result in either women or minority not following through and getting some of the opportunities that may in fact exist, that other people are accessing and therefore are getting a disproportionate benefit out of existing programs.

I just want add on a national level within the more national women's organization the plight of farmers is really not on their radar, it's not sex enough issues, and the fact that most of these are urban based organizations so rural women are not really part of that equation. They probably come in when your dealing with poultry workers and the repetitive injury stuff within that population which is largely women, maybe they might pay attention to it. But really there's a silence within the national women's movement. And not just the traditional white female movement, but also within the black national women's movement. Which is still largely urban based, it's just not one of their issues. I think actually some of the experience of this last couple years, of trying to get some more focus on some of the discriminatory practices within the department, have started to elevate the issue again, among some different constituencies, and it's not to say these problems didn't exist ten years ago, I mean they were there ten years ago, land loss was there documenting them, we were documenting them, but the level of focus has sorta percolated up and also the secretary at least responded in a way that a least gave an opening and it's not like we're sitting here saying everything that their doing is great. We do feel like there's an opportunity to put some pressure on and move some things in the right direction. But I do think that many of the issues that affect rural women and in fact, women farmers are issues that affect all across the board. In many cases, some of the women that we're working with are dealing with rural shelter issues, domestic violence issues, and in many cases the whole rural poverty is being ignored by an awful lot of people both in those communities as well as broader policy makers.

Well actually when the appeals division first started it was too effective. Because it was actually overturning 60-70% of the farmers home at the time of the decisions. Than this new appeals division, the law changed, or their interpreting the law differently, we're arguing that the law didn't really change, and that the department program people are basically intervening and questioning some of the cases when they rule against USDA. An so two years ago there was a very, very high review rate of like 55%, when the farmer won, there was a review rate coming from within the department back down. And that was really of major concern to us, because it put into question the whole decision making process of the hearing officers. Who in many cases came to working on Ag issues from other non-agricultural administrative loft type of arenas. And so in many cases, farmers for the first time, a relatively objective review of the issues that were before them. And so we've had allot of concerns in the last year, the overturn rates haven't been as high, but there's been a major problem in that people have gotten discouraged from going to the appeal system because of what happened a couple of years ago. On the discrimination issues, way back when they formed the national appeals commission there was separate legislation that said if this was a discrimination claim, it should in fact, be handled by a different set of reviewers because of the other laws that applied as opposed to the program delivery. And for years and years sat in boxes. And it's mind boggling to think, most of those claims sat in boxes. They were not reviewed. So not only did farmers did not resolve a discrimination complaints, in most cases, they lost their opportunity to participate in other farm programs. And so the level of disorganization that took place around some of the appeals and discrimination issues was really outrageous. And in 1990 there was a major law suit where there a Freedom of Information Act where there was thousands and thousands of pages of documents were turned over from the department to the Farmers Legal Action Group which was litigating that foyer case and that was in '90. At the same time there was a hearing on the Hill talking about farmer's home being a catalyst for an awful lot of what was going on in terms of discrimination. So, there's years and years of different issues that have sort of built up. There's some hope that at least within the Office of Civil Rights and creating a new Civil Rights Division within the Office of General Counsel, that they'll at least be some better direction and better focus. Some of the major law suits that have been filed against the department are pretty outrageous thing, is that once the farmers had won the suits, than the line came back, or the message came back that the USDA could not resolve the cases, because they had exceeded the statute of limitations. Of course, you've exceeded the statute of limitations if it took ten years to get decisions. And so at a pretty high level between USDA and the Justice Department and the Congressional Black Caucus, and intervening, a pretty high level political effort, has resulted in some legislation passing the house, which removes the limitation on the statute of limitations, and so it in affect creates a waiver of the statute for the group of cases. So that will hopefully mean that they can resolve some of these cases.

About a year and a half ago when the moratorium was put in place to sort of halt current foreclosure actions there was a review put in place looking at if there in fact had been discrimination and following that process that was some compliance reviews and there have been some real serious questions raised about that whole process and if in fact it was nearly comprehensive as it should have been and so that effects race and gender discrimination claims. I tried to get just really quickly but couldn't get the numbers, how many gender and race discrimination claims there are right now. What's pretty clear and which is an important piece coming out of where things are at right now that if people do file complaints now they are in fact putting systems in place that they'll be handled properly. I just want to comment regard to the numbers, we don't know the numbers of raced based discrimination because back in 1993 the Office of Civil Rights was dismantled so there was no review of those kinds of decisions, and part of the complaint of the black farmers who filed this class action is that cases were lost because of the documents or boxes of cases were lost. So we don't really have a hard number to give you as to what are the real number for these gender and race discrimination. And it's real bad. There are times when you really want to figure out century your in, what planet your on. We had a client in our office who was facing foreclosure action, had filed a chapter 12 bankruptcy to stay the action of the Farm Services Agency, but what happened was he than did an administrative action to get his case reviewed on race-base grounds and even with a letter from the Office of Civil Rights saying that the FSA should not move forward on the foreclosure sale and that the bankruptcy court trustee should just stop and wait until the agency make a determination, that was ignored. So even an official letter from the department doesn't carry wait when there's an agenda. And I must say it, I say I speak for black farmers, there is an agenda to remove us from the land.

That was part of what was starting to come out by some of the public pressure. The problem is in terms of who's actually hiring. You mean the career employees, you mean the career employees that are in that office. Even at Cabinet level you can't do it. I think part of what has come out of this last year or two of discussion about it if their repeated complaints about a certain employee they will go in an do a review. The question of whether that employee will be moved somewhere else, I mean we've got examples where people have did what they feel have been really bad practices within the state, people have been moved here to Washington. And that's actually part of what some of us have been proposing to the department that there needs to be a system of real rewards when people are doing the right thing and instead what we've found much to our concern is there's a significant number of staff who've been in the last five or six years who've been trying to make changes and they seem to get moved, allot faster than the staff who are telling them the lies. The only thing I would say on that level, which nothing has happened with a explicit gender discrimination case but unfortunately even within the department at this level an awful lot of those political appointees have been women and they've moved more rapid pace into other positions. And so, I think that there's increasingly just in the last years, months, a sense of trying to see if there's been some real concern and pattern at a pretty high level in terms of mid-career political appointments. So, that's a concern that's probably in every agency but at USDA people who try to make changes at the top get rebuffed at various levels, and often get uncut at the local level.

It's almost like the support network for people who are going into these positions, but I think the problem has been for some of us who have been wanting to encourage good people to be in those positions that often people's ability to do their work gets undercut.

We will do the movie and than do some more discussion if their is going to be a resolutions, I've been in and out of this meeting the last two days, but I know there was some discussion about some recommendations, or some resolutions or some follow-up and I think if there's something along those lines that people want to put together that would be helpful.

People are very complacent at times, and there are some people within the agencies doing the best job they can and than there are some really lousy people. People were afraid to make recommendations....That all said, I think this gets to the comment I made at the beginning of the importance in restoring a role for FSA in the lending process because as bad as we've all been saying about FSA the people are going to commercial banks, and going to the guaranteed loan process, and going to other levels, the priority for even looking at family farmers, or looking at women owned businesses, or looking at minority farms, it just isn't there. And so, I think we're sorta raising issues around FSA with an underline current of saying it's an important piece of the lending process and also that when people borrow from FSA and if they get in trouble, there needs to be an effective system for resolving it as opposed to what doesn't exist in many forms of credit.

Film: I'm Joann Kamenda again, and I'm here on working on promoting the film with the title of "The Farmers Wife" and you might wonder how a title with such an old-fashioned and traditional and not very politically-correct term entered into a workshop on gender discrimination. And we will talk about some of the discrimination issues that do happen to the farm women in this family follows this. This film should be a real treat for you to watch this afternoon. We are just showing you enough of the film to peak your interest in watching the full 6 and a half hours that will be aired on public television on the front line series the nights of September 21, 22, and 23. You will need to call your local public television station or watch for advertisements on the exact time of the airing. The film is a true to life what's known as cinema-verite documentary a young Nebraska farm family that Sherry and I have worked with for a number of years. They had used a number of our services that are available through the group that I work with Inter-Church Ministries of Nebraska. We have a farm hot-line, we have the farm mediation service, we have farm legal and financial assistance clinics, I work with all the food pantries in the state, so we do emergency referrals, and we do referrals for use of food stamps, and those types of things as well. So we worked with this family on a number of fronts. They are FSA or at the time FmHA borrowers. And you will see allot of interaction around those issues. Again, we're going to show just probably an hour or a little less or a little more, depending on where we want to cut this off, [[at the Carey letter]] OK that's 20 minutes in by the way. We're going to run over em...the picture is still a little bit rough. The sound quality their still working on as we speak. And there will be some folks who show up that you will not know the relationship to the family. Sherry and I will try to blurt out. This is Daryl's dad or Juanita's mom....so you have some clarity about who they are. So, let's go ahead and get started.

Also in back we do have viewer post cards to remind you of the date. It is best if you do call you PBS station for two reasons to make sure they are planning to air it, and that it will on prime time when it is being nationally broadcast from Frontline.