U.S. Black Farmers Lost Billions in Land Value, Study Shows

(Bloomberg) -- African-American farmers lost about $326 billion worth of land in the U.S. due to discrimination during the 20th century, a study found.

From 1922 to 1997, Black farmers in 17 American states saw a precipitous decline in their acreage caused by state-sanctioned violence and intimidation, according to the paper. The study, which analyzed U.S. Department of Agriculture census data, will be published in the American Economic Association’s Papers and Proceedings journal. Reuters reported on the study earlier.

Land and home ownership provide crucial opportunities to build wealth in the U.S. and “the current racial wealth gap represents the intergenerational compounding of discrimination,” said Dania Francis, economist at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and lead author of the study. 

“It’s important to put a numerical value on it that should be the measure we use when thinking about reparations,” said Francis. “We’re actually empirically estimating the dollars that left the Black community.”

The present value of the land loss is akin to the market capitalization of Target Corp., Starbucks Corp. and Ford Motor Co. combined as of January 2022, the paper showed. It’s also a conservative estimate because it didn’t take into account of the land Black households could have reinvested in business and education, Francis said. 

“The past has intergenerational consequences,” Francis said. “While other Americans at the time were able to build wealth, through land ownership and homeownership, those black families whose land was dispossessed didn’t have that opportunity.”

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