Senator JD Vance, R-Ohio, former vice presidential candidate of President Trump, said Sunday at the CBS The show “Face the Nation” said that the “Harris administration” had “distributed agricultural benefits to people based on the color of their skin.”
Vance added: “I think that’s a disgrace. I don’t think we should say, ‘If you’re a black farmer, you get welfare, if you’re a white farmer, you don’t get welfare.'”
Vance did not name a specific USDA program, but Chuck Abbott of the Food & Environment Reporting Network pointed out in an analysis released today that “the USDA recently made $2 billion in payments to 43,000 farmers who were discriminated against when applying for USDA farm loans.”
“Congress created the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program (DFAP) in 2022 after lawsuits blocked a $4 billion debt relief plan aimed at farmers of color that was criticized by Republican lawmakers as reverse discrimination,” Abbott reported.
“More than 58,000 people have filed claims under every category of the DFAP – race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and retaliation for civil rights activity, the USDA said.”
Abott added: “The DFAP website does not provide a demographic breakdown of recipients. Payments went to all states, the District of Columbia and three territories.”
“More than half of the recipients were producers in Mississippi and Alabama, who together received $905.5 million. The other states with payments of more than $100 million were Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Black farmers are most numerous in the South, but they produce only 1.2% of the nation’s 3.4 million items of produce, according to the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture.”
In the CBS In the interview, Vance also defended his previous comments praising Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan, who is often criticized by business leaders and Republican officials. Asked for his opinion on Khan, Vance said, “Well, look, I don’t agree with Lina Khan on everything, to be clear, but I think she’s been very smart in going after some of these big tech companies that are monopolizing what we’re allowed to say in our own country.”
“I don’t want Google or a billionaire who controls Google and is in cahoots with China to be able to censor American information. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.”
Khan is also interested in whether farmers have the “right to repair their equipment themselves” and whether grocery stores engage in price gouging.
–The Hagstrom Report
