Entrepreneurial Appetite
Entrepreneurial Appetite is a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism, and supporting Black businesses. This podcast will feature edited versions of Entrepreneurial Appetite’s Black book discussions, including live conversations between a virtual audience, authors, and Black entrepreneurs. In this community, we do not limit what it means to be an intellectual or entrepreneur. We recognize that the sisters and brothers who own and work in beauty salons or barbershops are intellectuals just as much as sisters and brothers who teach and research at universities. This podcast is unique because, as part of this community, you have the opportunity to participate in our monthly book discussion, suggest the book to be discussed, or even lead the conversation between the author and our community of intellectuals and entrepreneurs. For more information about participating in our monthly discussions, please follow Entrepreneurial_ Appetite on Instagram and Twitter. Please consider supporting the show as one of our Founding 55 patrons. For five dollars a month, you can access our live monthly conversations. See the link below:https://www.patreon.com/EA_BookClub
Entrepreneurial Appetite
Cultivating Generational Wealth: P. Wade Ross on Black Farming
Imagine being a fourth-generation farmer, carrying on the legacy of your great-grandfather, a runaway slave who managed to buy land and create generational wealth. That's the story of P. Wade Ross, CEO of The Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community-Based Organization (TSFR). Join us as we delve into his unique journey and take a closer look at the challenges and opportunities for Black farmers.
Together with Wade, we explore the history of land and labor and discuss how understanding these concepts is crucial for creating generational wealth through agriculture. We also touch upon the roles of community-based organizations in the lives of black farmers and how their efforts to provide access to resources and education can be a game-changer for the community.
Finally, we delve into the significance of building black economic power through agriculture and the potential partnerships that can be formed with black organizations and institutions. Wade shares valuable insights on the legacy of race relations in the South and its impact on black communities regarding farming. Don't miss out on this enlightening conversation that uncovers the challenges and opportunities for black farmers and the importance of building community wealth through agriculture.
What's good everyone. I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. In this episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite, we feature a conversation with P Wade Ross, a fourth generation farmer who is CEO of the Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community-Based Organization. Our guest today P Wade Ross, and he is the CEO I'm going to get this right The Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community-Based Organization. P Wade is a good brother who does good work here in our community and looking forward to having this conversation with him.
Speaker 2:So, p Wade, if you would just start off by giving us a biography of who you are and how you got into farming and what your relationship is to agriculture and business, all right well to start off, thanks so much for inviting me onto this platform And anyone who knows who knows I'm always eager to jump on and share stories when it comes to agriculture, because it's just not enough of that out there. So truly appreciate you. Let me jump on. But my background is I'm a fourth generation farmer. My great grandfather I'm going to say great, great, but great grandfather my dad's grandfather was a runaway slave from South Carolina and he ran away with his five brothers. They landed in Texas.
Speaker 2:At that time Texas was considered a safe haven, or was considered west basically, And his train was as a blacksmith and being good at what he did. When he arrived in College Station and Brian College Station area folks didn't want him to leave. So they gave him the opportunity to buy land, even though it was considered poor land out in the back 40s of College Station to keep him local, which is almost unheard of. He did actually buy the land, ended up paying for it twice. He went into, he finished paying for 10 years and he couldn't read and write so he would not to treat out back in his back 40. So when he went in to collect his deed, the guy you know said Hey, you can't read and write. How do you know?
Speaker 1:you paid this thing off. He said Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I got a tree out back that I'm not like we're showing us that tree. A group of men drove out, he pointed it out, they chopped that tree down and made him start from day one again. So he ended up paying for the land twice, never lived to see it paid off fully. My grand, my great grandmother, grandma charity Ross my grandfather was named was Jack Ross. She ended up making the final payments on it. So that's how we came And I know there's plenty of stories out there. That's our story on how we came across our land. He left the land to his six children, and my grandfather being one of the six.
Speaker 2:My dad actually was born on the land, moved up north to the shipyards And my dad always remembered, you know, being on that land picking cotton. He had 14 as a sister's, none of them who moved up north, wanted anything to do with Texas. Because of those rough memories. He, on the other hand, understood how his grandfather came, came across that land And it was always his dream to get back to it And the he would frequently come back and forth retired, to go to retirement in the 90s, the early 90s, and came back to be a cattle ranch. That was always his dream.
Speaker 2:I made a lot of mistakes. One of the biggest ones was buying expensive cattle before you have grass to feed, so we ended up building fences and making a lot of mistakes. But the good news is we were at right there in college station, where our land was close proximity to college, to Texas A&M University, which, as all of us know, is an ag school. So my dad being a, by trade, a college administrator, naturally if he needs information he's going to go to where the information is. So upon doing that, he always found himself being the only one in the only black guy in the room, and he would go to the barbershops, the black barbershops, and they hear the snickering, you know, amongst the people because they're like Hey, this is that guy you know, the city slicker from up north who came back home And now he's rubbing apples with all these white dudes And then he go to the meeting with white folks and they'd be like Man, what's this brother keeps showing up at all. You know who's this guy. So he was like Look, if you brothers aren't going to get the information that you need to, you know, improve your farms and your land so we can be a part of this game called agriculture, which is a huge game. He said that I'm going to bring it to you And that's when our organization started.
Speaker 2:At the time I was, i played shorts NFL stands for not for long. I was drafted by the dolphins but wasn't there long, ended up after a couple years of pro ball, ended up back on mom and dad's couch, you know, and said, hey, let me buy a couple tractors and let's get out here and do this thing. So fast forward. We got the organization started to simply just to bring information to our folks. We weren't going to be going up into these meetings. You know all white meetings And 25 years later, you know here we are. We're still here. It's our 25th anniversary last month And we are Texas small farmers and ranchers community based organization which was found by my parents, and my mom worked hard to get that CBO status. That's why she makes me say the whole name. I took on the CEO role a couple years ago.
Speaker 2:And I kept saying CBO, she said No, no, no, no, no you got to say the whole name because we worked hard to get that. But we're here to be a voice, for it, to be at the table for farmers black farmers, black and indigenous farmers, farmers of color, for policy, but also for education, to be a conduit for some of these programs that are out here, that are available And I'm sure we're about to get into. But that's kind of my story. I'm personally, my background is I'm a mortgage banker. That's what I feed my family, my day job, and from doing that one thing that I've learned was that there was a lot of fear of the unknown. So what I started doing was I created, i spun off of my mortgage business, a financial literacy pro consulting firm, which I do also, and with that I just try to bring it down.
Speaker 2:Because there's a lot of fear, because people don't know what they don't know, and sometimes it's just the language that, especially with black folks, we get intimidated by the language If it sounds like it's over our head, our ears close up And the thing is the white community knows that. The power brokers understand that. So guess where they put the secret sauce? they put it in the wording, they put it in those places that they know we're going to shy away from. So what I did with my, with my financial literacy program, is to bring this thing back in a language that we understand, and I always encourage my brothers and sisters man, be your word or terminology, especially if you're hearing it a couple of times, look it up.
Speaker 2:And we all got cell phones that we attached to, literally connected to, i've been Google. What does this word mean? Nine times out of 10, you can be like, oh, that's all that means. Man, put that in the memory bank because that's what's been used against us. So that's, i've kind of taken that format with me, you know, as one of my tools of the trade as a CEO in our approach, because, you know, rising tide lifts all boats And that's really what we're trying to do, because it does take a community And I think, the other thing that we've been brainwashed with as a people. It was great that we did what we did and we made the strides in civil rights, but one thing we did was we left behind our business promise. You know we stopped you know we stopped running our business.
Speaker 2:We all seen that movie Green. what was it called Green Book? We almost were forced to have our own businesses. But once that, once those 1960s hit, we all these civil rights bills, we started integrating, which is fine, but we left behind our businesses. We're the only race, ethnic people in this country who don't have, don't have what we call group economics as a way of life, every other group.
Speaker 2:we're prospering to others Arabs, you know, cubans, asians, i mean, you name it. they are prospering because they understand They don't run this. You know they don't run this by themselves. You know they better get together and start creating their own communities And they teach their children. you know they teach their children. Don't get too caught up in that education system, because that educational system is teaching you to be a laborer to make your boss rich. You go get that education, you even go get them jobs, but you bring them jobs back to your community and you own it. You own what you learned and you build on it and you lift someone else up. So that's why I know you didn't ask me all that, but that's really the premise of our what we're shooting for and what we're going for Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community-Based Organization.
Speaker 1:No, all that was good, all that was good and appreciated that you share. Before we get into the Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community-Based Organization, i'm trying to respect your mom, okay, because you always say the whole thing. I don't think I've ever heard you say CBO. I want to know, can you share with us what was it like for you growing up on a farm? The past two conversations that I've had one was with the woman who wrote Queen Sugar and even Lucky, who You Know in San Antonio with Gardopia Gardens but you grew up, as I imagine, on an old McDonald farm with cattle more than just vegetables, you had livestock and looked like. So what was it like for you to grow up in that environment and that type of entrepreneurial environment? Because farming my wife just has an urban garden in the backyard and it's hard work. We're on a quarter acre and that's the whole plot of land for the house, right? So the backyard ain't that much, but it's still arduous labor. So talk about what it was like for you to come up in that environment.
Speaker 2:Um, I have to admit I did not come up in that environment. So you know I came up basically when the 1930s hit and the dust ball and all that craziness. By necessity they never were. They never were letting us. They had things that were called farm unions back then to make sure that black folks were not making money other than the food that they were eating off of their table, that they were not making money off of agriculture.
Speaker 1:That wasn't a black man's game.
Speaker 2:So many of the farmers that you talked about either were growing for themselves their own tables in their own communities, which again, wasn't very prosperous. They had to go out and get jobs. So what happened with my family is we had to move up north and it wasn't until my dad. So our land literally, when I call myself a fourth generation father, it's fourth generation, but my dad didn't stop. He didn't come back until the nineties. It lay dormant for almost 50 years. I didn't grow up on the farm, So I'm a new. I'm new. I'm a new farmer in many, in many ways, And but that's almost a blessing too, because of the journeys that I've been on and what I've been able to see. But most of the farmers that you, that you're talking to, especially in Texas, which is a little bit different, there are very few of us who are what you call row crop cash farmers. I could probably count on one hand, and Texas is a big place in.
Speaker 2:Texas as probably the most black farmer by far than any other state in America. But guess what? We're not necessarily operational farmers And to the point where we're growing corn and cotton and sorghum and oats and wheat and things like that, that's not a black man's game right now. I'm just being honest with you. Now some of us do have livestock and some of us do have cattle. We do have a lot of acreage that we can grow hay on to sell that to our neighbors and make a good supplemental living. But but it's a purple unicorn. You know.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's a couple purple uniforms out there who are actually farming and making money. As a black person, 100%, i just don't know. I haven't seen them in Texas Now in Virginia's in the North Carolina is where you were in the Georgia's. It's a different game there, but there's a lot less people who are what we call black farmers and landowners and their soil, you know, is a little bit there, is a little bit richer. You know, all the way from Mississippi, alabama and to those other states in the southeast that we talked about.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I had no idea that the history of unions existed in farming too. You got to think about it.
Speaker 2:You know what's it. Carter Woodson, the who made G Carter Wilson's episode, that he made the wrote the book Miss Education of a Negro, right Yeah, yeah. And he, one of the things that he talked about was the transition. But you got to think about it. back then Agriculture was the industry, you know, stealing all that stuff and train tracks. you know, with my great, with my great grandfather was a runaway slave, was stealing the works. So agriculture was it. So guess what, if agriculture is it, they're not letting these brothers win on in that game anymore than some of the games that you see right now that we're not touching. And if we are touching it, it is. they are touching it and getting rich, rich, rich off of it. So they let us touch it as far as picking that cotton, but as far as being a part in the game and the economic game of it, back then it was, it was no different.
Speaker 1:So can you explain what a community based organization is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, So a community based organization is just that. we're basically a nonprofit that has a think. in Texas, I only think they have the real title. So in Texas it's really only about two or three certified community based organizations. After that I think they stop giving those certifications out. That's why my mom makes me say the whole thing through as part of our name. But it's basically an organization who is certified to serve the community and whatever the community's needs are.
Speaker 1:So you said, the Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community based organization just made its 25 year mark. Can you give us some of the history and some of the milestones that have happened in those 25 years and the things that you all have been able to do as an organization and maybe give us a sense of what you all do as an organization to provide access and resources and education to folks black folks looking to get into farming and agriculture?
Speaker 2:One of the biggest things that we did was, first and foremost, we introduced black farmers to USDA programs, which is kind of a USDA was kind of taboo for and rightfully so, you know, for a lot of the stuff that you've been reading about So previously, especially in the South. But in Texas no one USDA didn't know how to bridge that gap And they still don't. We're still working with USDA to work with farmers of color because of some of the discrimination and fears and things like that. So what we've done is really helped get those farmers to at least to the meeting. We're still struggling with getting farmers to raise their hand and say, hey, i want assistance in building my farm, with conservation practices, with, you know, getting high tunnels and with helping me out with erosion and building fences and things like that, because it is a process, as I talked about before, the devil is in the paperwork and devil's in the process for us, because we don't number one, we don't like doing the paperwork, you know, and once we get past that we don't a lot of black people don't want, you know, white folks on our land. You know we don't trust them. When they leave that land, what are they going back and doing, you know, is it, am I going to lose my land Because now somebody saw something they liked, you know, and they're going to try to trick me out of it? So all that kind of stuff goes on. But what we've been able to do as an organization is to help bridge those gaps with USDA and to really do more outreach and get some of these brothers to tap into those tax dollars that are theirs. You know that are coming out of our pockets each and every paycheck. But we're at a deficit because the white farmers and the other farmers of color who are tapping into it are winning with those very same funds that we're afraid of even tapping into. So that's, that's one feather in the cap of the other thing that we're very proud of, even if it goes kind of along those same lines.
Speaker 2:When it comes to the census, well, i don't personally believe that there's 11,000 black operational black farms in Texas. I think that number is kind of high. You know how census does they go? put some dubs on it. But what we were able to do, organization was able to do was put together a campaign that I think our slogan was stand up and be counted was to get a lot of the farmers, because we all know policy. You just mentioned that you had conversations with politicians, your local politicians. The first thing they'll tell you is we could talk all day, but if we don't have the numbers, we don't exist. You know that argument is going to die. You know it's going to die at the table. And what was happening a lot of times is we were saying you know, we were voicing the need but it wasn't showing up in the paperwork. So what we're able to do is get many black for the first time and the census and NASS, which is part of organization in USDA. You know they said they never have had as many black farmers, based on that which we had signed up for census and field out. We still, they're still struggling And we, since 2012, i think we haven't been as involved as we were in eight. They have said the numbers are coming back down as far as folks filling out their census for black folks, but at least we were able to get tons more to the point where now you know CNN and everybody else is calling because the headline is Texas has the most black farmers and ranchers by far than any other state in America. So that's a feather in our cap And just really some of the under the radar stuff.
Speaker 2:Getting together, getting with a community member. Maybe there's someone who needs their fence, maybe it's a 80 year old, you know lady who's had, you know black woman who's had property in her land in her family for years. She just can't get out and fix that fence in 90 degree weather. We go over there and fix that stuff. So there's a lot of things that we'll call a group in the area. Hey, let's go over here and help Miss May, you know, get this fence up. Those are some of the little things that we do. We do estate planning. We're going to be doing the heirs property training coming up. Those are just regular things that we do to get our folks to lean forward, get the information that we're not getting. And it's been tougher. It's been tougher once the pandemic hit because many farmers are aged out. You know, my dad himself is now in his mid 80s.
Speaker 2:And guess what? He doesn't know how to use a mouse on a computer. You know, my mom does, thank goodness. So we just kind of prop him up in front of the computer and she runs the show. But we've had to get many of. We've lost contact with a lot of our farmers on the pandemic because they just many of them aren't going in there. They like, look, i'm not learning how to work a computer, That's a young man's game. But guess what? A lot of commerce happens online, you know. So that's another piece.
Speaker 2:So there's gaps in what our organization tries to do is fill in the gaps. We understand we've made the mistake early on in trying to drag everybody across the finish line. That's too much heavy lifting And it burns a lot of resources. So what we've learned to do is get the word out, feed into their early adapters, create leaders and then, you know, let the and create more wins and winning stories. And the rest will follow. Because, as you know, us brothers and sisters, we're peculiar people, you know. We like the way, but we're very visual. We need to see it, we need to hear them stories.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I am. You mentioned something about the process of getting the land to your heirs, and one of the things that I'm wondering if you could give us some context for through the lens of agriculture is generational wealth. How was generational wealth passed and accrued through agriculture? before To answer that, question.
Speaker 2:I probably have to take a step back because a lot of times what happens is we don't have a strong grasp of history. You know how we got to this point and when we don't. So hopefully it's okay if I do that. I'm trying not to take long there to answer your question moving forward. But this country was built on capitalism as we know. Capitalism was directly built on the color of skin. Capitalism was created under the concept of land. Land is money, i mean labor creates money.
Speaker 2:So when America was created, who was the labor force? We were black folks, abroad, over here, based on the color of skin. Prior to that, there was no such thing as race. Race was created by, i think, pope back in 1488 for capitalism. So if you don't get that piece, everything else people on you're not going to understand the importance of land. They literally were giving away land to everybody else except the black people, because they understood hey, we've got to have a race of people who are going to do the labor, because when you're on, it's the same concept that we've been talking about. If you don't own anything but you're working, you go to school, you get an education to be trained, to be a laborer. Guess what? You're never going to build wealth. You're going to build the other person's wealth, but for you, what's designed, what is designed to do, is to keep you in the rat races, to keep you punching that clock as the laborer, because you don't own them anything.
Speaker 1:You don't have land. Hey, everyone, thank you again for your support of entrepreneurial appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's important for people to understand And that's why. And so they were giving land to all the immigrants at that time. A lot of those were Europeans We call white people. Today We're getting this land and they needed to have a race of people who were laborers to make money. Okay, now that's why we're locked in today. Everybody else I mean.
Speaker 2:Last year, i think Black people spent 1.6. They spent 20% of the GDP, whatever it is. We're 20% of the population, but we got 1% of the wealth. Why? Because we don't own anything. We don't own land And we don't have a culture where we labor and work for each other as a group, like every other, like we talked about before. So that brings you to agriculture.
Speaker 2:Now we can talk about agriculture and we can talk about building wealth. Agriculture is we do have land, we do have people, we have people in our community, so we do have a labor force. We do have people who need to eat every day. You can talk AI and all this stuff all day long. That stuff goes. Even the data that we're talking about, that stuff goes away. These computers crash, purposely or un-purposely, we still got to eat. That ain't going away. That industry has been here from day one. Agriculture has been here. It's not going to go away.
Speaker 2:Now, what you're seeing on the news, if you're really watching, there's a lot of façades, but you're seeing guys like Bill Gates buying up all the farmland. He understands when this thing switches. The guy who has the land and the guy who knows how to grow on the land just like what your wife is doing is in position to win. Everybody else is just boiling in the pot just like a frog, because they're sleeping at the will. They don't see what's going on.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if I helped answer your question, but at the end of the day, wealth is in the land, wealth is in the labor, and if you can all have both, because there's always going to be laborers here, but we're locked in. Black people are locked in as laborers. That's why we don't grow wealth, because we don't own anything. We clock that When we go out and buy that pair of sneakers for 500 bucks guess what? That new house or that new Mercedes Benz, our employers are clapping because they know we just put more pressure on ourselves to have to keep punching that clock to make them money as laborers because they own it. So I don't know, brother Clark, if I answered your question, but we build wealth by ownership, by teaching our children to own, but not only own, but to work as a group, and to get out of this mindset that we're individuals And just because we got an education that means we're going to make money.
Speaker 2:We got to get an education, not only in the school, but get it in your job so you can create your own thing and create your own labor force. And then let's lift each other up, just like every other community is doing.
Speaker 1:So I've got to eat. I think about part of the story that you told about was your great-grandfather. Your grandfather had a lot of children. Your dad was one of 14 who decided to retain land, and so I think about our relationship to land, our relationship to property. Now, sometimes our trauma and family drama gets in the way of us being wise when it comes to taking ownership of it After the ancestor, parent, grandparents died and they become ancestors. So talk about, like, how do you have that conversation or prepare your family for these situations that occur, so that you can keep a house with a decent size backyard? you might be able to grow some food or some acreage in your family, so that you're in a position to be able to farm that land or do something with it later on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's mine. It's funny that you say that because I actually led that conversation with my family six months ago, just like every other family, who got some crazy dynamics going on, you know. And you know, while a lot of us on this call may understand what I just mentioned before and the importance of us not only retaining our land but learning as a group to monetize it and getting together and becoming a community, that person who was sitting in New York, who hadn't seen the land hey, has a percentage of ownership isn't thinking that way. They're thinking how, hey, man I'm, it's rent is tight. You know, how can I monetize this? How can I get my little piece of land because somebody said I own it? and the thing that we don't understand is is that we all need to understand is that that person in New York, if they got 1% ownership, they got 100% say trust that We're thinking, oh, we're on the land, we're down here, we got the majority, so we control what air properties?
Speaker 2:if your property is in an air property, meaning that it doesn't specify exactly whose land, that is not only right now, but when that person dies. If it doesn't specifically and it can't say Mr Clark and Mrs Clark, or you're Langston and Langston. What's your brother's name, calvin? It can't say Langston and Calvin, it has to say Langston. At this survey piece right here You've read one of those titles and Calvin at this server. Because if it just says Langston and Calvin, you've got air property. And guess what, if something happens to you, calvin's children, you've got to deal with all your children And it gets messy and that one of your child might be up in New York or Virginia. That's air.
Speaker 2:So we're vulnerable because of what we don't know, and that's not only a big land, that's on the houses and homes that we own in the city too, but we don't know. So what you heard me start off with, what we don't know, hurts us And we don't realize in many cases till it's too late, till Big Mama's is you know, till we're losing Big Mama's house because no one knew what establishment knows. They know the game because they read the playbook, they made the playbook. So we're vulnerable with so many different ways. Now that person who is four, five, six generations removed from the title, and you got all these different. You know thousands, hundreds of thousands of pairs on it. That's a tough situation y'all. So we got to start talking about that, because that's what's happening when we pick up the newspaper and we're reading those headlines, but we don't really understand what's happening. That's what's happening.
Speaker 1:Alexis Swarn has a question about how does one go about acquiring land. He doesn't know any land-bearants, and I think that that's related to the next theme I wanted to get into about building new wealth through farming and acquiring the land necessary to do that. So what's the process for that? look like All right, so glad you asked.
Speaker 2:So that's really what you just said. There is really what our push is. You heard me talk about ownership, big on policy and politics, big on education. But it means nothing if we don't have the businesses. Everything, all those things need to be in place. When we have the businesses to support that Versus vice versa, we think we can march and do all this other stuff and it's going to make a difference. It ain't going to happen because the soccer mom's on every day That's going to blow over. That money is going to flow back to them. Those policies are going to flow back to them. So we have to do what we're talking about Figure out ways of entry, of access into the market, and one of the ways is what your wife is doing.
Speaker 2:Hey, if you've got a small space, start growing. Everybody, all of us, needs to learn the trade of growing our own fresh fruits, even if it's just for our own tables. But that's something that they can't take away from you. You saw what happened in the pandemic. So that's number one is to start learning. Get with the you know. Get with Texas small farmers and ranchers, community based organization, get whoever. You have to learn that trade of gardening and where that goes so big. We've also aligned with some food hubs and some distributors. There's money and there's money from that's come from Washington DC, that's landed in Texas And it was it's for socially disadvantaged. I don't really like that, but I understand what that means. That means that hey, if we don't raise up our hand, it's going to go to all these other groups that have now politically fallen into that category. So we kind of kicked in the door there. I probably shouldn't say that, but hey, it's kind of. What we ended up doing is to say, hey, make sure this money comes our way. So we've got funding for folks just like your wife, if they want to go bigger, if they want to get into the school districts, if they just simply want to sell you know, sell to a larger group. If they just want to aggregate maybe it's a church with a group of farmers, you know, a group of growers and farmer. If you're growing anything, you're a farmer number one, so and we can aggregate. Send a truck over and they'll pay top dollar for your produce. So that's number two. The other thing which has been very difficult but I just got a good phone call today which is land access and land act. There is barriers of entry because you know, when you have folks like Bill Gates buying up farmland, that means the price is okay. So that is a true barrier.
Speaker 2:We did put in for a grant. We are sub recipient of a program that will now allow people who are interested to and I've got I've got to be careful in what I say because I'm going on vacation. When I come back, i'm supposed to have a meeting that's going to really talk about how to lay this out, but that, basically, is going to buy 20 by 20 plots with these, with this funding, and allow a person who has never farmed before, or starting out, or maybe they are half farmed but they just don't have the land that they want to have 20 by 20 plots for three years to get their business up. And then we have, like I said, i'm a mortgage guy, that's what I do, that's my day job, that's how I feed my family is. We have programs with USDA that allows you to get it zero down, very low interest rates.
Speaker 2:If you choose to eventually buy your own land and create your own farm as well, it just has to be in rural areas And there's some limits on income based on the county that you're buying. So there's, there's also. We're also partnering with a group out of Atlanta They're also doing something in Chicago who are a land they're a land trust organization as well Same thing trying to create, trying to create access where there are barriers to land, access for farmers of color. So those things are coming down the pike. I can't talk into specifics because they're still in the works, but the funding is here. Now we just got to do the administrative side of it and the implementation side.
Speaker 1:Mallory Plummer Mallory, thank you for joining today has a question, and hers is how would you address black communities that are psychologically traumatized about farming, given race relations in the history in the South? How would you help our community get past the trauma in that sense? And I would add, I think that's an important conversation to have now because, as you said, farmers are old. So there's a thing happening right now where boomers are aging out of their businesses, whether they be farms, whether they be some obscure business we didn't think existed, and their children don't want the businesses. And so I think there's lots of opportunities, maybe even for black folks who want to buy farms from white folks who are just looking to make a good business deal, And so they're farming someone. But we maybe have this mentality. I'm not trying to do that farm work. We worked hard to get off the plantation, off the farm, right, And this may also help address Alexis' question too. So how do we start to have these healing conversations about yo, let's get back into agriculture, back into the farm?
Speaker 2:Number one to understand. it's a real conversation. It's something that our organization, the reason why we were free, we were formulated because of what you just said, because, hey, you know, we're traumatized, we don't want to be dealing with these white folks. So what I would say is, number one, what we've learned. we can't help everybody. You know, lord, we don't have a God of fear. So if you're in that camp and you're fearful, there's not much that we can do for you, but show you, you know, and hope that you jump on, because what I'm doing, what I do, is I focus on my children, i focus on my grandchildren And I say to myself we'll feel. you know, i'm traumatized too.
Speaker 2:You know, we just took, we just last week we've got a call from a food bank who wanted to do business with our organization. So kind of our motive Operende is my dad and I raise our hand first because we don't want to send our brothers and sisters down the road that they get screwed over all. So we're like, okay, well, let us be the test dummies. Basically, it was to buy our, our cattle at a premium price because from the fund, the funding that I just shared with you, there's some per cattle as well as vegetables. We had a premium price and we could use that extra money.
Speaker 2:you know money that we were normally going to make maybe 15,000 selling our cattle at the sell bar. we're going to make 60. Okay, so this was this money instead of giving reparations. that's kind of how they were coming at. So, okay, great, sounds good, let's test this thing out. So the guy calls, the guy from the food bank calls the meat processor. doesn't look like us And the meat processor says oh yeah bring your farmers down next week we'll get a fifth.
Speaker 2:So I'm out of town. But pop shows up. You know he's got his overalls. Oh, you know, old school hat on guy looks at him. Looks at the guy, the white dude from the food bank, and says, man, we're booked out for another year, just like that, yeah. Then he looks over at my pops and says, don't, you know, this is a rich man's game. So we get it.
Speaker 2:But what are you going? how are you going to handle that? You're going to stick your head in the sand. Are you going to do some of the things that we talked about, which is creating our own group economics, getting together, building our communities and taking the steps that we need to? So what we're trying to do now is focus on the folks who do, who are willing to step forward And with the understanding that, hey, the way they're thinking, in the mindset they have, they don't want you in that game. So make your own game. We've got communities and community we're some of the biggest consumers there is we just don't own anything.
Speaker 2:So what's the solution? Own your farms, own the food system, own the economy. Your own economy is just like every other race, ethnic race out here is doing They figured it out, we just have it. So we have to take a step back and not be so caught up in the miseducation of a Negro which says, hey, don't worry about being, you know, running your own farm, your own agriculture, your own business. And that business doesn't just have to be a farm. There's plenty of things that feed off of that. There's trucking companies. Farmers need trucking companies, they need warehouse, they need clothes stores, they need seed, they need fertilizer, they need gardening supplies, you know, they need food, sake, they need grocery stores, they need restaurants. So those are economies. All that can be owned by us. Why not us? Is what I would say to that question. Let's stop being so dependent on other economies and create our own. Why wouldn't we do it? But it has to start somewhere, and if we don't start it, then guess what? We're going to? just keep getting what we've been getting.
Speaker 1:And I think about this next question And how does this Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers Community-Based Organization partner with other Black organizations? And one of the things that I think about Peeway you're familiar with the East Side of San Antonio And it just seems like there's more Black churches on the East Side of San Antonio than there are Black people. It's just churches everywhere and they got land right, and so how do you see? I see those institutions as places where someone who wants to farm could partner with to start farming. So how do you all, as an organization, partner with other organizations to provide opportunities for farming in the community and whatnot?
Speaker 2:We start with mindset, because if you have the mindset that you're unwilling to understand history and where you've been, it's not going to. There's no collaboration that's going to prosper. We have to. You have to have the mindset as a group and as a collaboration that we have to reteach our children. It's okay. We don't have to be fearful of teaching our children how we got here. We don't have to be fearful of teaching our children of slavery even anymore. So then we do.
Speaker 2:The Black Wall streets, the Toses, the Wilmingtons, the Durham, north Carolina's, the Oakley, right here in Texas. Those are real stories of communities that have lifted each other up and created their own economies. But if we're not willing to take a step back, what happens is we get caught up in the crabs and the pot thing And then when the money here, when we start seeing prosperity, especially when the money shows up, then we're all of a sudden things start getting fragmented because we didn't have the fundamental mindset like mindset. So how Texas Small Farmers and Ranchers partners is that we get together and we want to make sure that you're on the right mindset and that we have the right people in the room, because otherwise we're just wasting our time. But we have to get back to the fundamentals. We have to understand McCarty G Woodson was talking about when he said Miss Education of a Negro. We have to be okay with saying civil rights. The civil rights movement did a lot of great things, but the one thing it didn't do was keep. We should have pulled our businesses along with us as we integrated. Then we'd be okay. We'd be just like the Jewish people and the Koreans and the Cuban communities and every Arab communities who they get out with. White folks too, they'll take. They'll take they dollar in their communities too. But guess what? They ain't having these conversations. They're not stuck in neutral. They're not stuck and locked into a class of laborers the way our black community is. So you have to understand all that, because if the mindset ain't right, we're just wasting our time.
Speaker 2:Once the mindset is right and we've been starting educating our youth in these churches as a group and we get them to start thinking in the right direction, now we got, then we start getting some money. You know, we get some money in our pockets. We start highlighting some of the winds of individuals within our group community. And guess what? It's just like Facebook and Instagram, everything else. Everybody wants that fear of missing out. Everybody wants to be a part of something good. That's the black folk. So that's why things like hip hop and all that stuff took off, because, guess what, everybody wants to be a part of something good. We got enough bad stuff in our communities. Let's get, let's do something good.
Speaker 2:But it comes back to having the proper mindset and be willing to embrace history, the good and the bad, because you don't understand where you've been and how you got here. How are you going? ever? We're going to stay stuck in neutral, and that's what's. That's what we've learned as Texas Small Farbors and Ranchers. We didn't learn anything else over the last 25 years. It's that you got to get all the way back to the fundamentals and align with like minded people and be okay. If that's not everybody, we get it. Not everybody's going to get that piece of it.
Speaker 2:But let's get the like minded folks who do it. Let's get going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, are there any books out there that you're reading or that you've read or that you suggest for people who just maybe are interested in business, or anything specific to agriculture that you're interested in, or some piece of literature that you like that inspires you? Yeah, missed.
Speaker 2:Education of a Negro is is is big. more recently, and you can, if you guys are YouTubers, not rears. I'll be honest with you, i don't love reading. I either do the audio book, sort of, or I go to YouTube and watch. you know, audio Google. Claude Claude Anderson. Yeah, power, get his book, power Nomics.
Speaker 2:He's got some other books that were pretty, are pretty good as well, that really just talk about some of the principles that I shared and and he's somebody you know, claude Anderson, somebody I look up to There's some things. he even in the things he felt that I look at that and go, okay, this is how we can do this a different way. Right, he's got his. he got the right idea Maybe Gunnar Brown or some things of the wrong way and it didn't work. So, guess what? That's a learning lesson to at least he put it in motion. Yeah, there's so many books. I would say Emeth is a great one because it talks about business, talks about the three differences. It's a simple read, but it's also a story. I think it's a story of a pie maker. a pie maker who talks about being a technician, which would be a farmer. It talks about being a manager, which is the person. maybe you run the farm, but you also have to manage the money.
Speaker 2:Because if you just out there planting stuff, but you ain't tracking. You know what the cost is versus the income. Then guess what You just doing? you're just a hobbyist. So the managing side of the email also talks about. There's the technician, there's the manager and then there's the entrepreneur. You know the visionary, the person who is doing kind of what we're doing, kind of taking a step back and looking at the big picture.
Speaker 2:Because if you're all, if you're just managing all day long, you're not able to step back and kind of see OK, man, let me pivot this direction or this we're making a lot of money here, making money here, but just a little bit, let's, let's go this way. That's what a that's what an entrepreneur, a plenary minded person, does. So if you can't be all three, right. If you're trying to be all three, you're wearing too many hats. You wear two of those, but if you're trying to wear all three, you need to add someone to your team, but the right person to your team. So that's another good book. I'll be quiet. I know you're over time, but those are books that came to mind. I know I'm going to have more that pop in my head because I do. I do study stuff all the time, but those are some of the key ones.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing. P Wade, i appreciate you for taking the time to join us here. I think Loa Loa has says there's TSFR startup weekends, incubators and accelerators. I don't know that's a, is TSFR. Oh, he's asking if your organization posted startup weekends, incubators and accelerators.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, so that's part of the new funding that I'm going to be jumping into when I get back from vacation. So I do encourage you to jump on our website, sign up for our newsletter and you will see more information on that, as, as we administer, put that in motion, implement that program Now that we have the funding for that. So stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Again, P Wade, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:Hey, appreciate you all having me.
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