Roots of Strength: Agriculture and Black History in America

Agriculture is more than farming. It is survival, resistance, ownership, and legacy. For Black Americans, the story of agriculture is not just about crops and land. It is about endurance, innovation, and the fight for self-determination in a system that worked tirelessly to deny it.

Long before tractors, farm subsidies, and modern agribusiness, Black hands built the foundation of American agriculture. And even today, Black farmers continue to carry that legacy forward, often against extraordinary odds.

The Original Agricultural Experts

Before Africans were brought to America, many came from advanced agricultural societies. West and Central Africa had sophisticated systems of rice cultivation, irrigation, animal husbandry, and soil management. When enslaved Africans were forced onto plantations, they brought this knowledge with them.

Rice cultivation in South Carolina and Georgia, for example, was built almost entirely on African expertise. Enslaved Africans knew how to manage water, build dikes, select seeds, and increase yields. This knowledge created massive wealth for plantation owners while Black farmers remained in bondage.

The irony is painful. Black people were among the most skilled agricultural workers in the world, yet were denied ownership of the land they made productive.

Freedom and the Promise of Land

After the Civil War, many formerly enslaved families believed land ownership would finally mean freedom. The promise of “40 acres and a mule” represented the chance to build wealth, stability, and generational security.

That promise was quickly broken.

Instead of land ownership, many Black families were pushed into sharecropping and tenant farming. These systems trapped families in cycles of debt, tying them to plantations through unfair contracts, high interest, and manipulated accounting. While technically free, Black farmers were still economically controlled.

Even so, Black families farmed anyway. They grew food, raised animals, and built rural communities, churches, and schools. By 1920, there were nearly one million Black farmers in the United States.

Systemic Land Loss

Over the next century, Black land ownership was attacked from every angle.

Discriminatory lending from the USDA made it nearly impossible for Black farmers to get loans.

Local banks refused credit.

County offices delayed or denied assistance.

Heirs’ property laws caused families to lose land through forced sales.

Violence and intimidation drove families off their farms.

Between 1910 and today, Black farmers lost over 90 percent of their land.

This was not accidental. It was economic warfare.

Land is power. Land creates wealth. And when Black farmers owned land, they owned independence.

Why Agriculture Still Matters

Today, fewer than two percent of farmers in America are Black. But agriculture remains one of the most powerful tools for rebuilding wealth, health, and independence.

Land provides:

• Food security

• Business opportunities

• Equity and appreciation

• Environmental control

• Generational inheritance

In a world dominated by debt, rent, and wage dependency, land is one of the few assets that produces while you sleep.

That is why returning to agriculture is not going backward. It is reclaiming something that was taken.

A New Generation of Black Farmers

Across the country, a new wave of Black farmers, ranchers, and land stewards is rising. They are growing organic produce, raising livestock, running CSAs, building agritourism businesses, and creating food systems that serve their own communities.

They are not just farmers. They are educators, entrepreneurs, and land defenders.

This movement is about more than crops. It is about sovereignty.

When you control food, you control health.When you control land, you control destiny.

Honoring the Past, Building the Future

Black history and agriculture are inseparable. Every seed planted today carries the memory of those who planted before us under far harsher conditions.

Honoring Black agricultural history means more than telling stories. It means:

• Supporting Black farmers

• Investing in Black-owned land

• Teaching young people how to grow food

• Protecting family farms

• Reclaiming ownership

The soil remembers. And so do we.

The future of Black wealth, health, and independence is deeply rooted in the land.

And that future is still growing.