Department of Fagriculture?

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet in Washington DC with Perry Stevens, the LGBT Special Emphasis Program Manager for the USDA's Natural Conservation Resource Service. After hearing about my project, he got in touch and wanted to pick my brain about my the movie and LGBT farmers. His current work is to make the internal USDA a safe place for LGBT employees through awareness trainings around queer issues. Though it was exciting to meet with him and hear about the work he is doing at the USDA, my main interest in meeting with him was to have a greater understanding of the USDA's relationship and stance on queer farmers. Should we be viewed as a minority population and be eligible for special grants and loans? Is this something queer farmers would even want- government help and recognition? How do USDA employees interact with queer farmers? Have there ever been complaints filed to the USDA from either employees or from farmers on the basis of gender or sexual identity?

The USDA has historically not been a friend to minority farmers, especially farmers of color. For example, see the Pigford Case- a class action suit filed by black farmers that was settled earlier this year for $1.25 billion dollars after black farmers had complained for many years that they were subject to unfair treatment while applying to local county committees for farm loans and assistance. Black farmers were consistently denied USDA farm loans or forced to wait longer periods of time for approval than non-minority farmers often causing farms to shutdown because of foreclosure or financial disaster.

Considering this horrific historical relationship to minority farmers, I wanted to know what the USDA was going to do to be an ally for queer farmers. Mr. Stevens didn't seem to have too many immediate answers, as his focus is currently on increasing awareness and leading the USDA's employees to create queer friendly workplaces. He mentioned that it would most likely be around 5 years until real the work of outreach and focus on queer friendly customer (farmer) service from the USDA side would happen. In good news, he did mention that to his knowledge, no discrimination cases have ever been filed with the USDA based on issues related to gender identity or sexual orientation.