By Doug Miller

After a recent meeting with U.S. Senate majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, John W. Boyd, Jr., the head of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) said roughly 80,000 new claims have been filed under a re-energized suit to compensate black farmers for discrimination suffered at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but funds earmarked to settle the claims apparently have been misplaced in the year-end budget shuffle.

“We hope we haven’t gotten lost among the other issues,” declared Boyd, referring to debates about national healthcare reform and a surge in the number of U.S. troops headed for Afghanistan that have monopolized headlines during the past month. In terms of a total settlement amount, “We were pushing for $2.5 billion,” the NBFA leader told The Defenders Online. “The question now is where the money is in the president’s budget. Nobody can seem to find out what exactly happened” to the funds.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration reported it had added $1.15 billion to a fund aimed at accommodating late claims associated with a decade-old discrimination lawsuit accusing the USDA of denying black farmers agricultural loans, disaster assistance and other aid routinely awarded to white farmers. The original class-action suit, which Boyd said involved some 22,000 claims, was settled in 1999 for just short of $1 billion in damages, but was reopened as part of a 2008 farm bill in which lawmakers budgeted an additional $100 million in compensation and extended the deadline for filing claims.

Rep. Artur Davis, an Alabaman Democrat and a lead sponsor of that 2008 legislation, has acknowledged the $100 million essentially was a low-ball figure meant to defuse any legislative debate and speed passage of the bill. In a press release accompanying Davis’ introduction earlier this year of a follow-up to the 2008 farm bill, he noted that the proposed legislation (HR 3623) “would put an end to any suggestion that Congress intended the $100 million appropriation to be a cap on damages to litigants. It reflects what the actual language of the farm bill expressly says – that Congress has the intention and the authority to add to the $100 million figure as the litigation progresses.”  In the wake of the White House’s May 2009 decision to raise the settlement stakes by $1.15 billion, it’s not clear why congressional authority is required.

Davis’ current bill also allows reasonable attorney fees and administrative costs to be paid from the judgment fund and makes any scheme to intentionally defraud black farmer litigants a criminal offense.

The NBFA’s Boyd called USDA practices that spurred the original suit some of the “worst, most egregious acts of discrimination that have occurred” in the last 40 years. “It’s just horrible, horrible stuff,” he contended, an assessment bolstered by a detailed posting that can be found on a message board linked to the NBFA’s website.

Published earlier this year by a reader self-identified as A Retired Fed, the posting allegedly presents a firsthand account of blatant discriminatory practices engaged in by the USDA’s Farm Services Agency, apparently in California.

“I worked for USDA for 29 years,” the contributor begins. “I saw the discrimination… I am white and it was shocking to me. It was all a big joke to these people. There was no way in hell they were going to help a minority farmer. Oh, they made it look good. They were experts at appearances. But they had no intention of giving any assistance, if they could avoid it, to any minorities. Every single day while I worked there… I had to endure racist jokes. If it wasn’t something about watermelons it was a joke about tortillas.”

The last reference suggests a connection to a similar discrimination lawsuit filed nine years ago on behalf of Hispanic farmers who accused the USDA of denying or delaying loans to them based on their ethnic background. As in the case of the black farmers’ suit, often referred to as the Pigford litigation, the plaintiffs allege that white farmers routinely received identical financial help. In 1999, thousands of Native-American farmers and ranchers also filed a similar class-action suit against the Department of Agriculture? litigation that still has not been settled.

In a sense, the black farmers’ suit hasn’t reached final settlement, either, despite the awarding of tens of thousands of claims. Deadlines keep getting extended and more money keeps getting added to the damages fund, though now the trouble seems to be tracking it.

While acknowledging he’s upset that Congress and the USDA are not farther along in the settlement process, Boyd said he’s hopeful a final money figure can be established before the end of the year. “I’m still optimistic,” he advises, “the president will stand behind his pledge.” If not, he added, more demonstrations by activist farmers can’t be ruled out.

Doug Miller is a writer living in Westchester County, New York.