Earl Butz was arguably the most controversial Secretary of Agriculture in the history of the United States. He encouraged farmers to “plant fencerow to fencerow” and told them to “get big or get out” regarding farm sizes. Subsequently, his expansionist ideology helped set up the farm crisis of the ’80s and still haunts American agriculture with its systematic problems of overproduction.
Nonetheless, there’s another aphorism attributed to Butz that is less talked about but also consequential. In 1974, at the World Food Conference in Rome, he stood up and said, “Food is a weapon.” He urged the U.S. to use its abundance of agricultural goods, whether by “trade or aid,” to coerce other governments into favorable actions. While the concept of manipulating food supplies for political gain is as old as civilization, one of the disturbing ironies is that before Butz had spoken in Rome, the U.S. was already using food as a weapon against its own people.
The Jim Crow era spanned approximately from the end of Civil War Reconstruction (1877) to when states could no longer enforce official segregation measures (1965). During this period, it was essentially impossible for Black farmers to make a living, especially in the South. In addition to discrimination from white business owners and community members, the USDA would often not grant loans, subsidies or credit to Black farmers. Black farmers lost 6 million acres of land between 1950 and 1964 alone, forcing them to either migrate north, sharecrop the land of white owners or take up low-paying agricultural work on holdings owned by white farmers.
Without the ability to support themselves, the Black population did not have much political agency. While federal law allowed them to vote in elections, the white landowners they were dependent on frequently gave them the choice to “vote or starve.” Often, going to the ballot box would result in the landowner evicting the sharecropper or firing the farmhand. Needless to say, government officials did not intervene.
Fannie Lou Hamer picked cotton from the age of 6 and had to leave school at the age of 12. However, that didn’t stop her from becoming politically involved. She organized voter registration efforts in Black communities and built enough of a profile as an activist to eventually be asked to speak at the 1964 National Democratic Convention. What she would become known for most, however, occurred three years later, when she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative.
Hamer had moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, a predominantly Black area with little economic opportunity and high rates of food insecurity. She understood that it would be impossible for the Black community to fight for their political rights if they could not first feed themselves. In 1967, she obtained financial investments from nonprofit groups and wealthy activists to purchase 40 acres of land, and would soon receive another donation of 55 pigs, for a project she called the Freedom Farm Cooperative. By 1970, Freedom Farm had 2,000 pigs, and in 1972 it expanded to 600 acres of land.
Freedom Farm eventually fed 1,500 families. Crops grown included a variety of vegetables, including okra, collard greens, sweet potatoes and tomatoes. Residents were able to trade work hours for a portion of produce, with the excess going to other families in need who could not participate in the program. Families could also raise a pig and then eat it after it had produced piglets; the piglets were then redistributed among other cooperative members. The “pig bank” was essential in establishing food security in the community. As Hamer herself said, “Down where we are, food is used as a political weapon. But if you have a pig in your backyard, if you have some vegetables in your garden, you can feed yourself and your family, and nobody can push you around.”
Despite its success in supporting Black residents in Sunflower County, the Freedom Farm Cooperative only lasted nine years. A series of droughts, floods and tornadoes between 1972 and 1973 hurt its crop production and hence its income, and the local and state government refused to offer support. Worse still, Hamer became sick with breast cancer and was forced to become increasingly less active in the project. She passed away in 1977, one year after the farm closed.
Did Butz’s geopolitics receive inspiration from how the Black population was treated in the South at the time? It’s probably impossible to know but also worth mentioning that Butz was forced to resign after making racist comments.
Nonetheless, the legacy of Hamer and the Freedom Farm Cooperative suggests that while access to food can be wielded as a political weapon, agriculture can also be used to build local resilience. When it comes to agricultural policy, there are many reasons to support the viability of family farms. One of them is to recognize the ability of farms to help sustain the communities around them. Family agriculture keeps money and people in the area, improving the local economy and ultimately empowering its rural residents.
With a pig and a garden, good things are possible.
