COLUMBUS, Ohio – This week in the Ag Report, Chuck Ringwalt and Andy Vance discussed disparities in farming.

What You Need To Know

• According to a 2021 United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, women as well as minority farmers and ranchers experienced less access to credit than other agricultural businesses


• According to USDA data, 1.4% of farmers identify as Black


• Each week, Chuck Ringwalt and Spectrum News 1 agriculture expert Andy Vance discuss topics of concern within agriculture

"If we were talking about housing, we'd be talking about redlining and some of the practices that happened throughout the 20th century to deny access to credit to certain groups of people based on race and other demographic factors. [The] USDA was apparently not immune to that," agriculture expert Andy Vance said.

Vance said the USDA faced allegations of racial discrimination throughout the last century.

"[The] USDA was sued and the case was called the Pigford case. That went through and talked about some of the discriminatory practices that USDA lenders employed to essentially keep people of color out of owning land, owning farmland. So the department now has been working to try to rectify, you know, generations worth of those discriminatory practices. But ultimately, what this GAO report showed is that now something like a half-of-a-percent of all farmland is owned by people of color, which, you know, is a stunning statistic in and of itself," Vance said.

One resource for Black and minority farmers is the National Black Farmers Association.

Ringwalt and Vance also discussed food insecurity.

"The problem isn't that we can't produce enough food. It's how do we make sure that everyone has access to that food? You might look at transportation, logistics as part of it. You know, there are parts of the world and parts of the country where we talk about food deserts, the cold chain, can we get food from here to there? But the real issue, frankly, is that the people who struggle with food insecurity struggle with it not because food isn't available, but because they can't afford it. And so you're talking about an issue of economic equality as much as you are about food insecurity," Vance said.