Fund proposed for female farmers in USDA bias cases

[The Straight Story]

Fund proposed for female farmers in USDA bias cases
By Jerry Hagstrom CongressDaily December 11, 2009

In what may be the beginning of a multibillion-dollar congressional effort to settle discrimination suits against the Agriculture Department, two key House members introduced legislation Thursday to establish a $4.6 billion compensation fund for female farmers who have been denied loans since 1981.

House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said their bill is long overdue.

"Years of discrimination and unnecessary hardship for these women, and all minorities, cannot be allowed to continue," DeLauro said. "It is time to do right by those that have been discriminated against in our past and present, to live up to our founding principles, and to legislate an end to this unfortunate and regrettable era."

Joining DeLauro at a news conference were farmers from Montana, California, Florida and New York who were among thousands of black, Hispanic, Native American and female farmers who were part of four discrimination cases filed by each class against USDA a decade ago, charging that they were denied farm-operating and emergency loans that the agency routinely made to white male farmers.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44224&dcn=todaysnews

[SpiralHawk]

1. Women produce the most food. Thank them for you tucker

Globally, women are by far the major food producers (and preparers).

If you are one of those people who eats now and then, you should know this -- and appreciate this element of our essential reality.

In the US, a surprisingly vast number of ag acres are in fact owned and more or less controlled by women -- but they often listen to men advisers, and so the land winds up getting treated, um, well frankly, the way men (of a certain mindset) treat women...

[ensho]

2. true

nt