(Untitled)

[gunslnger]

Pigford v. Glickman: 86,000 claims from 39,697 total farmers?

This means that the U.S. may be recompensing at least 86,000 African-American farmers for past racial discrimination. But how could that possibly be true if there are only 39,697 African-American farmers in existence nationwide? And if only some subset of them ever applied for loans in

Comments

[meus_ovatio]

Perhaps there are so few black farmers because many black farmers were denied start-up capital, and thus are not recorded as "farmers" when they couldn't be farmers because the lack of said start-up capital.

[gunslnger]

Uh, yeah, that was in my link, as a blockquote. I'm not surprised you didn't see it.

[gunslnger]

Are you being deliberately obtuse or do you really not understand the question?

[sgiffy]

I could think of a few possibilities

1) Multiple denials for the same farmer.
2) Farms change hands and multiple owners could have been denied.
3) Duplicate filings.
4) People who did not yet have a farm but were looking for capital.

It looks like they are looking at them carefully as only 59% of the on-time filings were approved and paid on. The others it seems would need to get a re-hearing. If they don't actually own a farm I imagine it would be found out at that point.

Its not like they have just been sending them checks as they file.

[il_mio_gufo]

Capital commentary! I was just going to list those:

1) Multiple denials for the same farmer.
2) Farms change hands and multiple owners could have been denied.

The thing is, crops must change also...season to season and year to year. And the problem with the disappearing bees has surely not helped any US farmer.