Abstract
Black agrarian movements in the US have variously worked towards gaining equality within broader society and access to resources from dominant institutions as well as separation and independence from dominant systems and the creation of alternative institutions and structures. Often associated with different groups or movements, these differing tactical approaches are at times at odds, creating fissures between groups or movements or tensions among individuals. But they also can be used as complementary tactics towards a long-term vision of developing alternative socio-economic systems.
This paper explores how a plurality of rural development tactics manifests within a single organization using the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund (Federation) as a case study. More narrowly, this paper examines a specific on-the-ground configuration of organizers and farmers working with the Federation who are using goat farming as a tool for rural development in western Alabama. By focusing on the practices, expressed goals, and interactions of the people involved in one particular effort, this paper shows plurality to be a quality that is tactically useful for (1) navigating between a long-term strategic vision and the pragmatic survival within the current system and (2) building strategic coherence while respecting individual differences. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper focuses on the practiced and relational ways farmers and organizers work to synthesize the plurality embedded within the Federation’s Black development ideology in order to build sustainable and effective forms of change.
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Notes
This paper does not deal directly with the works of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, but rather notes the way they were used as a shorthand. There is a wide range of scholarship on the works of both. For instances, see Thomas Aiellos’s “The Battle for the Souls of Black Folk” (2016), Manning Marable’s “W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat” (1986), or articles by Robert Brown (2011) or J.R. Pole (1974) among others.
The USDA defines small farms as any operation with less than $250,000 gross cash farm income. Many of the goat farmers working with the RTRC had between 5–40 acres of land, and far less than $250,000 gross cash farm income.
Socially disadvantaged is a term used by the USDA to indicate the impact of social factors, such as racism, on farmers’ success.
In the US, the Morrill Act of 1862 provided grants of land to states for the establishment of universities that would be dedicated to using research in support of surrounding farmers and industries. These 1862 land-grant universities still have the mission of extension and outreach. In the South, these universities were segregated, leading the federal government to offer some funding for the support of additional universities for African Americans. These are the 1890 land-grant universities. Later, additional funding was also used to support tribal universities with the same mission.
Silvopasture integrates timber and livestock on the same land.
This was a national program, but since it was focused on small-holding and limited resource farmers the program was directed more towards regions with these types of farmers, such as the southeastern US.
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Funding
This study was funded by the race and difference initiative, Emory University, Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Emory University.
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Franzen, S. Plurality in black rural development. Sustain Sci 17, 1247–1261 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01153-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-022-01153-8