VC Office Hours: Unlocking the Farmers’ Market with Black Farmer Fund

Black farmers appear to have acquired the tough finish of each stick this previous century.

In 1910, they represented round 14% of U.S. farmers and owned over 16 million acres of land. At this time, one in 100 farmers are Black, proudly owning lower than 5 million acres and dropping $326 billion in land worth. Farmers are suing the USDA for alleged discrimination.

VC funding within the agtech area has been booming these previous few years, and plenty of farmers additionally obtain some sort of sponsored funding, whether or not from the federal government or nonprofit organizations. These alternatives don’t look like trickling all the way down to Black founders, nonetheless. Crunchbase discovered that since 2018, $98.6 million out of $39.4 billion have gone to simply 5 Black-owned agtech corporations. This, alongside the federal government’s alleged discrimination, implies that Black farmers have been marginalized from accessing the precise monetary assets they should survive on this specific market.

It was for these causes that in 2017, Karen Washington and Olivia Watkins created the Black Farmer Fund. The fund gives financial and social alternative to Black farmers and agricultural and meals companies within the Northeast with the aim of serving to construct neighborhood wealth for Black agricultural companies all through the area. There are round 703 Black-owned farms throughout the Northeast out of 196,000 complete, Watkins stated, including that in New York alone, the common Black farmer makes –$906, whereas white farmers make round $42,000. “There’s a large racial wealth hole in agriculture and throughout industries,” Watkins stated.

The fund is technically a nonprofit with a debt fund connected. It raised an oversubscribed $1.1 million pilot fund in 2021 from traders and establishments, which it then invested into eight companies. It’s elevating its second fund with a goal of $20 million and has hit about half that quantity to this point, Watkins stated. As a debt fund, it affords low-interest neighborhood notes and grants, writing checks starting from $1,000 to $3 million.