New Funding to Allow AAMU to Facilitate Access for Farmers of Color

The Alabama A&M University Small Farms Research Center (SFRC) has received $8.5 million in grant funding from USDA/Farm Service Agency (FSA) to lead outreach efforts to deliver education and technical assistance to underserved farmers of color in the Deep South (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee). The five-year project will provide the most effective training, education, technical assistance, and decision aids needed to improve producer skills, enhance farm profitability, and reduce the risk for underserved farmers of color. 

The project’s rationale is that preparing and supporting underserved farmers and facilitating their equitable access to land, capital, markets, and government programs, and empowering them with foundational business, farm, and risk management skills, along with common climate-smart production techniques and effective mentorship support, will help them make better financial and farm management decisions which will, in turn, improve their chances for long-term success in farming. 

Dr. Duncan Chembezi serves as the principal investigator of the project and director of the five-state consortium comprising five 1890 and one 1862 land grant universities (Alabama A&M, Fort Valley, Alcorn, Tennessee State, Southern, and Auburn), and several community-based organizations including, National Center for Appropriate Technology, National Crop Insurance Service, and Alabama State Association of Cooperatives (a subsidiary of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund). Chembezi is a professor of agricultural and applied economics and director of AAMU-SFRC.

“Literature is replete with research-based evidence that regardless of geography, finding secure access to high-quality land is the greatest barrier faced by underserved minority farmers and aspiring farmers, and the number one reason farmers are leaving agriculture,” said Chembezi. “There is a need to reverse these trends of land loss and lack of access to land among populations and communities of color." 

The funding is authorized under Section 1006 of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021, as amended by Section 22007 of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. The primary focus of this authority is to strengthen land access with additional opportunities to focus on capital access and market access for use in agriculture. 

“The ability to access capital and viable markets allows landowners and operators to retain access to their lands or seek new lands/expansion of existing operations,” said Chembezi. “The project addresses core barriers to access land, credit/capital, and product markets, while also working to retain farmland by mitigating and preventing land loss.” 

“This award is a testimony to the outstanding and effective delivery of outreach and technical assistance to underserved agricultural producers by the AAMU-SFRC team,” said E’licia Chaverest, assistant director of the Center, and co-principal investigator of the project. “The competition for the funding was stiff; AAMU is one of only three land grant universities after University of Wisconsin and West Virginia University, and the only 1890 land grant institution to receive funding under this authority.”

The Center is an outreach arm of the AAMU College of Agricultural, Life and Natural Sciences. Chembezi also serves on the USDA Advisory Committee on Minority Farmers, first appointed by the former USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue in 2020 and re-appointed in 2022 by Secretary Tom Vilsack. Both Chembezi and Chaverest have previously and separately been appointed by the USDA Secretary to serve on the USDA Advisory Committee on Beginning Farmers and Ranchers. 

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