evidence: For black farmers, the effect of discrimination by the USDA has been particularly devastating. In 2012, only 1.58 percent of U.S. farmers were black or African American, according to the most recent USDA Census of Agriculture.7 In 1910, this number was about 14 percent.8 As the number of black farmers shrunk, so did the size of their farms. All told, black farmers lost 80 percent of their land from 1910 to 2007. As the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights concluded in a 1982 report, this pattern of discrimination virtually eliminated black farms, dealing a serious blow to rural black communities.9