ituations facing Black-owned land, and he estimates that 90 percent of the Black farmers he works with are affected.
In his job, Hilton has attended emotionally fraught meetings with extended family members who barely know one another but co-own land.
The goal of those gatherings is to designate a single executor to make decisions for the property. Without an executor, any of the dozens of co-owners could force a partition sale.
While the problem of heirs’ property needs to be addressed on a policy level, and by providing legal and mediation resources to families, Lawrence says solving the problem also involves a specific kind of relationship building.
“The future of farming in the South is to reconnect our young people with the land,” she says.
The younger generation grew up seeing their parents or grandparents struggle to overcome poverty and to access resources from white-controlled banks and agencies, says Lawrence.
“All they saw was struggle. So when their parents passed, the children said, ‘Hey, I’m not coming back down there, so let’s sell it.’”
But Robinson’s story is proof that sometimes the younger generation does return home. Today, he leases 10.5 acres of family-owned land – an uncle is the executor – and has begun farming produce, with plans to expand to poultry, laying hens, sheep and cattle. He also wants to restore an old pecan orchard.
In the past five years, with the support of the Southwest Georgia Project and various USDA programs, Robinson put in a well, a hoophouse and irrigation. He’s also working on various conservation efforts that are eligible for government reimbursement, including cover cropping and establishing a wildlife habitat.
Deckton Hilton works with Robinson and dozens of other farmers to provide technical assistance and business planning support. Originally from Jamaica, he says the organic farming methods he grew up with seem to resonate with the Georgia farmers.
“This is what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were doing, but they’ve lost some of these skills,” he says.
Hilton is encouraging them to diversify, grow for niche markets, plant leguminous cover crops that replace nitrogen in the soil and practice traditional dryland farming methods to withstand drought – techniques that Hilton believes will support these small-scale, Black-owned operations into the future.
Robinson is thinking about the future, too. While no one in his family currently wants to sell the land, Robinson worries that the land is vulnerable if subsequent generations become more detached.
“Land is wealth, and it’s generational,” says Robinson. “But if you don’t understand that you have wealth, and if your mind sees the land as a negative because of our history with slavery, then you don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
He says he’s trying to “reprogram” his family’s thinking.
“To show them this land is not negative. That this is so positive,” he says. “This land will sustain your family for generations, even long after you’re gone.”
Debbie Weingarten is a freelance writer based in Tucson, Arizona and a 2019 finalist for the James Beard Award for Investigative Reporting. Follow her on Twitter at @cactuswrenwrite. Mike Kane is a Seattle-based freelance photographer and videographer. His photojournalism and video work from 2018 won awards from the National Federation of Press Women, Society for Features Journalism and Society of Professional Journalists. On Instagram, he is @kaneinane. Equal Voice is Marguerite Casey Foundation’s publication featuring stories of America’s families creating social change. With Equal Voice, we challenge how people think and talk about poverty in America. All original and contracted Equal Voice content – articles, photos and videos – can be reproduced for free, as long as proper credit and a link to our homepage are included.
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