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That’s how Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center (BBJC), describes Congress’s historic decision to approve $5 billion in debt relief and other assistance for farmers of color as part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Most of that was Black-owned land in USDA [possession], and the Black farmers wanted their land back, but only one farmer received his land back. The importance of implementation [of the American Rescue Plan’s debt-relief program] comes in when we look at the disastrous implementation of the Pigford lawsuits, particularly Pigford I.Can you elaborate on why you believe the Pigford I settlement was disastrous?With respect to Pigford I, there was rampant attorney malpractice, incompetence and the aggressive posture of the Department of Justice and USDA in challenging the Black farmers’ claims. Given the historic discrimination farmers of color have faced, what are your thoughts on politicians such as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), who criticized the American Rescue Plan’s debt relief provision as “reparations,” and called it unfair to white farmers?It really shows that our politicians don’t have a firm grasp of U.S. history, world history, and federal ag policy, because we know that, with the Homestead Act of 1862, 270 million acres of land were transferred from and stolen from Indigenous nations and provided to mostly white male settlers.

Something you don’t hear a lot about is that contamination makes its way down to Ottumwa, which—like Des Moines—also uses the Des Moines River as a drinking water source. In the last five years, Des Moines River nitrate has exceeded 10 mg/L (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standard) just downstream from Ottumwa at Keosauqua on at least 76 days and exceeded 8 mg/L (the level at which your shorts get in a bunch if you’re You could easily say the nitrate threat is greater in Ottumwa than it is in Des Moines because Ottumwa lacks the diversity of water sources and treatment plants that Des Moines has. While you can argue “fairness” all day long, the truth is the Des Moines area, with a large customer base residing not only in the city of Des Moines but also in several affluent suburbs, has the resources to purchase and operate nitrate removal technology.

We have seen thousands of new Indigenous, Black, and Brown farmers and food justice activists get trained in 35 states, and the majority of them go on to make powerful waves in the food system. And we’re building powerful networks with Black Farmers United New York, Heal Food Alliance, the National Black Food and Justice Alliance to get at the root cause of exploitation of the Earth and those who tend and care for her. And others who run or work for institutions with purchasing power might be sourcing food from Black, Indigenous, and people of color producers, or transferring our institutional resources, power, and dignity to Black, Indigenous, and people of color leadership. The corn grows tall and provides starch and niacin for the people, the bean sister winds around her older sister and provides nitrogen for the soil and protein for the people, and squash, laying low on the grounds, shades out weeds and provides vitamins and fats in the seeds so the people would never go hungry again.

We’ve been hearing more and more about the impact of pesticides on insects, other wildlife, and ecosystems, but this research puts a magnifying glass on another huge concern about the explosive use of pesticides around the world: their impact on people. The fatality figure made headlines most recently in 2017 when the United Nations released a report on pesticides and human rights, and one article after another repeated the figure like it was breaking news: The conclusions should alarm us all and kick policy makers into gear on long-standing commitments to crack down on the world’s most toxic pesticides, like the insecticide chlorpyrifos still widely used even though it’s a known brain-damaging chemical with no safe level of exposure for children. include the public health effects of the uptake of pesticides via food either, we know there are residues in food and drinking water—and that’s another important issue that needs systematic review.