John Boyd Jr say President Trump’s aid package is no help to Black farmers

As President and founder of the National Black Farmers Association John Boyd Jr., is all about helping Black Farmers get a piece of the agricultural dollar, and Donald Trump’s $16 billion aid package doesn’t trickle down to small and minority farmers.

“The bailout doesn’t do anything to help black farmers like myself,” he said on MSNBC recently, adding, “When the president says it’s a great time to be a farmer it’s not true.”

Trade wars with China is making life miserable as some farmers are comtemplating suicide due to loan debts and not getting much for the grain they bring to market.  He got nothing from the first bailout of $12 billion less than a year ago.

America and China are placing tariffs on each other imports and the Chinese in turn is helping to produce the same soybeans and corn crops in Brazil that Boyd farms on his 300-acre spread in Virginia.

Farmers are not getting fair trade under Trump and White farmers are getting hurt by his policies more than Blacks, but they are afraid to speak out against the President.

Boyd was recently targeted with ‘racist graffitti on his Virginia farm (f— that nigger), for speaking out against Trump’s trade policies.’ He said scare tactics used by Trump’s supporters will not faze him and he will continue to speak up.

His ‘civil rights activism’ began in 1994 when the third generation farmer started his stellar organization to fight discrimination by USDA of Black farmers in the form of loans and other assistance.

Boyd’s voice and activism was instrumental in securing a $100 million addition to the 2008 farm bill, forcing it to reopen a government discrimination settlement with Black Farmers originally resolved in 2000. That determination and out spokeness help produce the 2010 legislation putting aside $1.15 billion to finalize the discrimination lawsuit signed into action by President Barack Obama. This legislation became Pigford II and the first settlement was Pigford v Glickman (Pigford I) settled in 2000 for $1.06 billion and reopened under Obama in 2008.

In 2013 about 18,000 Black Farmers began receiving the second allotment of the $1.2 billion lawsuit filed against the Department of Agriculture based on racial discrimination, especially when it came to lending practices.