The Black Family Land Trust is a North Carolina-based conservation organization that works to stem and reverse historical land loss among African American families and minority farmers in the Southeastern U.S. We have made nine loans since 2017 to clients of their programs, usually providing operating capital and/or bridge financing to small farmers awaiting USDA reimbursement grants for infrastructure improvements. One such loan in 2024 financed the maintenance of Rooted Acres Farm, a 52-acre pine forest growing on ancestral family land consolidated by the borrower’s grandfather from heirs interests held by his relatives. He was referred to the Black Family Land Trust by the USDA’s Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Program, and BFLT has been working with him to invest in the land in order to make it a productive asset for his family.
African American land loss has historically been accelerated by the legal ambiguities surrounding “heirs property”, in which control or even ownership of land is complicated by incomplete records and fragmented interests. Deeds may indicate possession by early generations, but without records of transfer to descendants (a consequence of both active and passive exclusion of African Americans from civil institutions), as a family tree branches and re-branches many people may end up with claims on the property even if they haven’t had any connection to it for a long time, putting the people who have been actively living there in a tenuous situation, with many unfortunate follow-on effects: the need for unanimity in decision-making about heirs property land, leading to family conflict – if all parties with an interest can even be located; the temptation to cash in an interest in a possibly far-away property, diluting family control; property taxes not offset by sufficient income because of nonprofessional land management practices and racism, putting pressure on families to sell their land; etc.
BFLT and other groups working on African American land retention efforts often encourage forestry as a relatively straightforward and safe strategy for making productive use of land – as well as turning the tables on historical patterns of exploitation. Particularly in the South, African Americans have a long history of forestry experience on the labor-intensive side of the ledger, but less so on the capital-intensive property-owning side. Even when they did own forested land, they were often victims of predatory undervaluing of timber sales by wood buyers due to a lack of forestry education. In addition, many forest property owners collect lease fees from groups that use the land for hunting, but discrimination has resulted in African American landowners benefiting less from this opportunity than white landowners.
By offering an alternative to active use of undeveloped property that its owner(s) may not have the interest or ability to engage in, and providing support in accessing the resources needed to take advantage of that alternative, BFLT encourages African American land owners to retain possession of their family legacy and incentivizes resolution of heirs property conflicts. In this case, our borrower already owns his family’s land, but he lives more than 150 miles away on the other side of the county and is not a farmer. With BFLT’s guidance and our loan, he is making an investment that will generate dividends in the future while maintaining ownership of the underlying resource. The trees will be ready to harvest in ten to twenty years – about the time his son will be ready to enter college and start his adult life.