It's been a long time coming, but Black farmers could finally be on the verge of winning their personal war against historical and systemic discrimination.

Over a decade ago, the Department of Agriculture reached an important and monumental settlement, which acknowledged that they cheated Black farmers by denying them loans and putting white farmers at the front of the line to receive money for homestead improvements and growing-season wherewithal, between 1983 and 1997. The ruling declared that $2 billion ($60,000 for each farmer) be doled out on top of loan forgiveness and tax assets for some farmers.

That was 1999. It's now 2010, and the farmers still haven't seen a dime of their money. With President Barack Obama in office for over a year now, he felt it was high time to provide these farmers with justice. Last Thursday, the Obama administration announced a $1.25 billion settlement to be included in the 2010 farm bill.

"With the settlement announced today, the USDA and the African-American farmers who brought this litigation can move on to focus on their future," said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a statement released last Thursday. "The plaintiffs can move forward and have their claims heard." Holder said the government will stand with the Black farmers not as an adversary, "but as a partner."

But the bill must be approved by Congress, and until that happens, Black farmers are still taking everything with a grain of salt. While not as widely known as Brown v. Board of Education, this settlement runs on the same plane of importance.

The case is known legally as Pigford v. Glickman. Four hundred African-American plaintiffs joined Timothy Pigford in the class-action lawsuit filed in 1997, alleging that the USDA treated Black farmers differently when it came to receiving "farm ownership" loans, operating loans and price support loans. Also, the farmers claimed that the USDA never took the farmer's complaints of discrimination seriously.

The USDA claimed that many complaints were not processed because they were not received by their deadlines.

"[The] USDA has made it a top priority to ensure all farmers are treated fairly and equally," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a public statement. "We have worked hard to address USDA's checkered past so we can get to the business of helping farmers succeed."

According to the Department of Agriculture's census data in 2007, the average white farmer owns 418 acres of land and makes $134,807 a year. The average Black farmer owns 104 acres of land and makes $21,340 a year. Black farmers also tend to be older than their peers nationally, with an average age of 60.3 compared to 57.1 overall. In the early 20th century, Black farmers owned one out of every seven farms. It's now one out of every 100 farms. With old age and lower wages, justice cannot come soon enough for these farmers.

"The farmers are older," said John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association, yesterday. "Many have died waiting and are not here to see this day." Boyd also reminded Congress that if the settlement isn't paid out by March 31, the Black farmers can walk away from the settlement and hunt for a new one.

In February, Black farmers from Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia protested in Washington, stressing how tired they were of waiting and demanding a swift payout by the powers that be.

A fundraiser for the New York City's first Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference will take place this Friday at the Horticultural Society of New York near Midtown. The fundraiser features speeches from Kolu Zigbi, the program officer for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, and Karen Washington, the president of the NYC Community Gardens Coalition and co-founder of La Familia Verde Gardens Coalition.

While the AmNews did not receive any response from some of the speakers and major organizers by press time, it is safe to say that this settlement will possibly dominate conversation throughout the conference.