April 14, 2025 Story by: Publisher
Right now, Richie Guess’ farm in Spencer isn’t very profitable.
Guess is also a full-time truck driver, and his wife, Stephanie, works at a bank. Oftentimes, money from their day jobs goes back to their 19-acre farm.
“But what I envision is having some generational wealth for my kids and grandkids, something that they can have,” Guess said.
Guess looked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for help with his dream. But he couldn’t get approved for a loan to purchase land or machinery. So he had to borrow from a bank instead at a higher interest rate.
He didn’t understand why he was able to get a loan through a bank but not the USDA. It never sat right with Guess, and he now believes it was discrimination.
The USDA has tried in recent years to address historic discrimination against Black farmers and other marginalized groups. The Biden administration’s Discrimination Financial Assistance Program provided payments to farmers who had experienced discrimination from USDA farm lending programs in the past.
With its long history of rural Black towns and minority-owned farms, Oklahoma saw one of the highest concentrations of payments in the nation from the program last year. But some Oklahoma farmers said the money wasn’t enough. Others, including Guess, weren’t approved for payments.
Now the Trump administration is cutting USDA programs aimed at helping minority farmers and other programs they’ve labeled DEI. Details about some programs have already been scrubbed from the internet, and some Oklahoma recipients said they’ve had funding frozen.
“USDA has a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” the spokesperson wrote.
Oklahoma saw the third-highest number of payouts in the nation in 2024 from the Discrimination Financial Discrimination Program behind Mississippi and Alabama. The USDA awarded almost 3,000 Oklahomans more than $100.6 million in payments, according to archived payment data the agency erased from its website after President Donald Trump took office. The agency didn’t respond to questions about the missing payment data.
Across the nation, about $2 billion in payments went to about 43,000 recipients, including 38,263 people identified as Black or African American, according to the department. Some farmers who received payments said they didn’t feel it was enough compensation for generations of discriminatory lending at the USDA.
Coweta cattle rancher Billy Cade said he intended to buy 40 acres of land for his farm, but after waiting years to be approved for a USDA loan, the sale of 20 of those acres fell through. The agency approved him for a payment from the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program last year, which he said alleviated some financial stress. But the money didn’t have the long-term impact he had hoped.
The experience drove home the importance of self-reliance, he said.
“I am learning from the mistakes of myself and my elders, and I’m going to continue to keep my farm running, regardless of what somebody says they’re going to do for me or not, not relying on the hand and the help of anybody else because it is unreliable,” Cade said.
One study found that in the 20th century, Black farmers lost millions of acres of land worth about $326 billion, largely because of discriminatory practices.
The assistance program was one of many equity programs the USDA was undertaking to address systemic discrimination before Trump took office.
Courtney Brown, agriculture leadership professor at Oklahoma State University, said initiatives like these are needed to combat a fear of extinction among Black farmers.
“I think that if we do not get targeted in our efforts, we’re going to continue to see those numbers drop,” Brown said. “So either you want to continue to see those numbers drop and we keep having these umbrella approaches, or you have to get strategic and figure it out.”
John Boyd Jr., founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, said it took years of advocacy for the USDA to acknowledge discriminatory actions. Now he feels like the agency is going back in time.
“We’re going decades backwards here, with pretty much no oversight from Congress or anybody else,” Boyd said.
The future of USDA equity initiatives
Brooke Rollins, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, rescinded all diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the agency on her first day in office. She also canceled more than $132 million in contracts and announced that over a thousand more were under review.
Some of those agreements and initiatives benefited Oklahoma producers of color.
OSU’s Oklahoma County extension office secured a three-year grant through the USDA in 2020 to create the Eastside Fresh Market in northeast Oklahoma City, a part of the city historically considered to be a food desert.
The market gives urban farms in northeast Oklahoma City a place to sell and distribute their products. Many of those farms are operated by historically underserved groups that need ongoing support, according to the project description.
The extension office received a second USDA grant last year for vendor training and to increase the market’s capacity, said Lyndall Stout, an OSU Extension spokesperson. The office learned that the grant had been frozen in late January with no explanation.
A USDA spokesperson said in a statement that the department reviewed the Farmers Market Promotion Program and cleared it to continue making payments as of March 12.
The USDA announced in late February it was suspending a scholarship program for students at historically Black land-grant universities, including Oklahoma’s Langston University.
After pressure from lawmakers, the Trump administration reopened the application period for the program, though the future is still uncertain for potential participants.
USDA funding to support Oklahoma’s historic all-Black towns is also now up in the air. Information about the initiatives was recently scrubbed from the agency’s website.
The USDA announced in November that it agreed to pay the Greenwood Community Development Corporation $250,000 to provide historic all-Black town residents with financial literacy and entrepreneurial training. But funding is now on hold, said Freeman Culver, the organization’s administrator.
Workshops focused on developing a business concept, budgeting and overcoming financial challenges are delayed, Culver said.
Culver said he hopes the sessions will be an asset for rural residents, not just Black Oklahomans.
“Historically, these have been all-Black towns founded by Black people, led by Black people,” Culver said. “But there’s all types of residents in these towns, and we want to help all of them.”
A USDA spokesperson said the agency is reviewing funding and will provide updates as soon as possible.
Culver said his organization hasn’t received any explanation or updates from the federal government on its funding. He’s continued to check in every two weeks with the agency. He continues to remain hopeful that the money will be restored.
“We just want our fair share,” Culver said. “That’s why I think it’s going to be released. Because they’re going to review this program, other programs like it, and they’re going to see that this is not about no preferential treatment or anything like that. This is really about restoring access to business information and training for rural residents in Oklahoma. That’s what it’s about.”
Source: The Oklahoman
