For the third and final installment of Food & Power’s series examining the influence of financier investment in farmland, author Humon Heidarian, a food policy professional with a focus on racial equity and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Vermont, spoke with Olivia Watkins, co-founder and president of the Black Farmer Fund.

The Black Farmer Fund seeks to “repair Black communities’ relationship to food and land” by providing low-interest community notes and grants to Black-owned food and farm businesses in New York state. Heidarian spoke with Watkins about investment trends in food and agriculture and how to increase access to capital for Black farmers and food business owners.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Humon Heidarian: What do you do, and how did you get to where you are today and the work you're doing now?

Olivia Watkins: I started the organization in 2017 with my co-founders at a farmer conference where we were discussing the lack of access to capital for farmers in general, and particularly for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] farmers. We decided that we wanted to be able to create a financial institution for Black farmers that they could trust and receive a non-extractive and non-exploited capital from.

HH: Were you familiar with this type of investing and how it's affecting Black farmers at all before?

OW: I was familiar with it, but it wasn't as prevalent as it is now. And now, since land has appreciated since then, it's just continued to be more and more attractive. … Corporate or institutional investors are seeing [farmland] as a good opportunity because of that and also because of the food shortages that we've seen in COVID as well.

A lot of people do want to be involved in either preserving farmland or producing food, creating sustainable regional food systems. And at the same time, we have to make sure that as we have more interest in preserving farmland and creating regional food systems, that the farmers —who are actually the skilled people in doing that and who have been doing that for decades and generations — are able to benefit from some of the wealth that comes out of it and able to benefit from access to good food and able to benefit from these new opportunities as well.

HH: So then would you say that the farmers on the ground are not benefiting now, or what is the situation that they're in right now?

OW: I think there are lots of amazing [BIPOC] farmers and food businesses that are on the ground right now doing the work that they need to do. But because of some of the historical and racial discrimination that's happened not only in financial system[s], but also … politically and socioeconomically, our farmers definitely have been at a disadvantage intergenerationally and also have not been able to access financing in the same way that some of their non-BIPOC counterparts have been able to.

HH: Has investing changed? Has the landscape of investing and how it's affected farmers changed in any way, or is it increasing at a steady rate, or has there been no change at all?

OW: Well, I think more and more [of] the general public is realizing that they want to have closer access to farmers. They want to know who their farmers are and where their food comes from. And so people are looking for opportunities to invest directly in farmers and food businesses. But it is hard because there aren't many organizations that are like ourselves who are focused on directly supporting sole proprietors or LLCs of family farmers or young farmers who come out of college. And on the flip side of that, as I was mentioning earlier, a lot of farmers typically have trouble either securing access to capital from traditional means, whether or not it's because of their credit score, whether it's because of student loans or something else. There's just a gap that exists right now [in] people being able to access capital to purchase land. But the demand in terms of being able to support people who are doing the work is very much there.

HH: How does this trend fit in the farming landscape with these new actors coming in?

OW: I think [what] we're noticing is that especially for some of the farmers that we're working with who are trying to purchase land, whether or not it's their first time purchasing or they are currently leasing and want to own, the market is not necessarily skewed in their favor, meaning that prices for farmland are extremely high. And that is a couple of things: One, there is a high demand for farmland because of what's been driven by corporations. And two, because of COVID as well. A lot of people have moved out of cities into more rural areas who might have more discretionary income. It just limits the options. And it also creates an incredibly expensive market from our farmers to choose from.

But there are lots of organizations and also other funds that are doing work in terms of setting up farmers with lease-to-own models for purchasing farmland [or] land trusts that are working on getting land in conservation easements to be able to decrease the market price.

So that way, farmers can purchase land and also conserve that land and prevent it from being either developed by real estate or being put in corporations. So there is work that is happening to combat this, but those are definitely some of the trends we are seeing.

HH:  What would you say are some of the long-term impacts of, say, Wall Street investment firms and  Bill Gates owning the most land, or the work that TIAA or Harvard has been doing with buying up land?

OW: That type of aggregation of land continues to conglomerate wealth and power and economic control in specific … portions of our society. And we have seen time and time again that this method of agricultural production and conservation is not beneficial. And so I think we need to be working more towards a new normal that redistributes that wealth by giving land back to Indigenous folks by allowing other communities to be able to purchase land at affordable prices. And, in turn, this democratizes power and shifts some of that economic control to communities in order to kind of reduce some of those effects from happening.

HH: So your organization provides a lot of financial support, and that is incredibly important. But from what you just said and from what I've talked about with other folks, it seems to me that there has to be a political change, or a cultural shift beyond that. So what are some of the other solutions that you think need to be implemented for a longer-term, systemic change?

OW: Engaging local government has been something that we're really interested in supporting, especially since we particularly have a more space-based lending focus in New York state. And so we work to engage with the local government. And the local government does have a lot of control, especially when it comes to land and zoning and things like that. And so we've seen that by communities coming together to form coalitions, it puts pressure on the government to be able to either put more land [in] conservation easement to protect it or to be able to allocate budget line items so people are able to access farmland. And I think, honestly, that is one of the biggest ways that we do that. And there are some federal policies like the Justice for Black Farmers Act.

HH: Are we too late to change the trajectory of land consolidation that we are on right now?

OW: I don't think we're too late. I think there are … many organizations that are actively working on this that are behind the scenes, on the ground, not in the public eye media, who are doing really incredible work, and who are resourced and who we need to continue to be a resource in order to do this work. So I don't think that we're too late.

We're part of a larger group of organizations in New York state that we call the ecosystem. … We kind of serve as a financing arm. Corbin Hill Food Project serves as a distribution center for farmers, and Soul Fire Farm serves … educational programs for farmers. Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, help[s] farmers access land, while simultaneously protecting ecosystems and advancing environmental policy.

… It's a systemic issue that is going to require long-term commitment and long-term change and concentrated efforts from governmental organizations, from foundations, from other nonprofit organizations, and even too from corporations that are interested in decolonizing the way that they are aggregating wealth and power in order to be able to redistribute that to communities of color.

HH: Do you have anything else that you want to add about the work that you're doing, why you're doing it, and why is it important?

OW: The way that land and wealth is aggregated, everybody knows that that's not great. And it's especially affecting BIPOC landowners and users and distributors. To give you kind of some context in terms of, like, New York state. …. Out of 67,000 farmers, only 139 are Black. So we particularly work with Black farmers and food businesses that are currently established or who want to start up and enter into the space to continue to increase the diversity. So it's important that organizations and people on the Hill are making sure to give voice to the producers and the people who are actually distributing food and who are marketing food and who are creating regional, local food systems.