By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
In the southeastern U.S., the loss of historic Black family land is endemic. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), rural landholdings by Black families has declined from a peak of 15 million acres in 1910 to less than 2 million acres today.
But Leaders at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) hope to help stem the tide in loss of land by using a grant to implement the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention (SFLR) Program in Texas.
The $310,000 grant, awarded to the university by the American Forest Foundation, will provide PVAMU’s Cooperative Extension Program (CEP)-Agriculture and Natural Resources (AgNR) unit with funding to tackle the issue.
“Our goal is to help landowners avoid heirs’ property and land retention issues and understand the value of properly managing forest land,” PVAMU AgNR Program Leader Dr. Clarence Bunch said.
In the years following the Civil War, Bunch said Black families were able to purchase property for the first time, but often lacked access to or funding for legal representation and consultation. Consequently, much of the land was passed down without a written will and became what is legally known as “heirs’ property,” indicating all heirs hold a common and equal interest in the property.
As the land passes from generation to generation, ownership becomes more fractionated, often eventually devolving into situations where many distantly-related individuals hold interest in a property.
Any one of these individuals, or anyone who has purchased one or more individual’s share, may force a partition sale of the land, which is what occurs when two or more owners have equal shares in a property and one of them wants to sell, according to Bunch.
He said partition laws in every U.S. state permits any shareholder, even if they only have a very small stake or only recently inherited that share, to petition a court of law to sell the entire property at auction, even if not every shareholder wants to sell.
“A shareholder could be someone who acquired the title to that share. Unfortunately, speculators may see the potential in a family’s land and take advantage of some of the owners to force a sale, often at prices much lower than fair market value,” Bunch said.
The PVAMU leader noted heirs’ property is a complex issue and particularly prevalent in low-income populations.
“We’re talking situations where heirs’ property may have up to 200-300 members. Many of the property owners may not be living in the same state anymore, or there may be some that sell their property rights to someone else because they no longer have an attachment to that property,” Bunch said. “Other people are purchasing the rights and forcing the remaining family members into a sale. There are land speculators, developers, people who are making money and whose intent is to engage and sell the property for development. The devastating part of this is when someone purchases a share of heirs’ property and forces a sale, oftentimes families end up being kicked off their land, particularly elderly relatives who lived there their entire lives.”
But it’s not just the forced sale of land by relatives uninterested in maintaining ownership that’s an issue.
Because there is often a lack of clear title to the land, heirs’ property owners frequently face obstacles in accessing USDA farm programs, such as conservation incentive programs offered through the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
“The people who do own forestland are not always aware of the value of the forestland. USDA agencies like the NRCS have cost-share programs that can help the farmers and make the land become profitable for them and their descendants,” Bunch said. “But the challenge lies in that part of farm program eligibility requires proving ownership, and oftentimes the heirs are so many, and they’re all supposed to sign off before a farmer can engage in these program activities. But the farmer has a hard time even finding all the heirs, let alone getting them to sign the documents. The changes in the 2018 Farm Bill were supposed to streamline some of these program eligibilities, but it does remain a problem when enrolling heirs’ property in farm programs.”
Bunch and others involved in the project hope to change the outcome for many Black families who hold private ownership of forestland in Texas, helping them retain ownership and preserving their family heritage for future generations.
“The SLFR program will address two main issues: the lack of participation or ability to participate in government programs and helping engage individuals in clearing up the problems surrounding heirs’ property,” he said. “We hope to provide education about how to defend or prevent against these situations. We’re excited, and we’re hoping to have an impact as we move forward.”
The program is a collaboration between the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, USDA NRCS, USDA Forest Service, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, The JPB Foundation and American Forest Foundation. The entities hope to resolve some of the legal issues surrounding heirs’ property and recruit landowners in actively managing and conserving private forestland.
PVAMU-CEP-AgNR’s Small Farm Institute Program will offer group and one-on-one forestry management assistance meetings, assist landowners in creating forestry management plans through the Texas A&M University Forest Service (TFS), help those landowners enroll in applicable USDA programs and provide legal services to resolve heirs’ property and title issues.
“We’re working with government agencies, but we’ve also partnered with several community-based organizations including 100 Ranchers, Texas Agriforestry Small Farmers & Ranchers, Landowners Association of Texas and the Pineywoods Small Farmers, Ranchers and Landowners of Texas,” Bunch said. “We’re utilizing a network of federal to local organizations to try to ensure we reach people at every level.”
Bunch noted the program will help forestland owners enroll in or qualify for assistance for forest management plans through programs such as NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program.
Well-managed forestland can produce valuable timber and other economic, environmental, social and health benefits for owners and their communities, Bunch added. He said the SFLR project will be conducted in East Texas, which was identified as a high-priority area of the state by TFS.
PVAMU is one of the project sites in the SFLR Network, joining existing sites in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
For more information about the SFLR Program in Texas at PVAMU, contact Bunch by phone at 936.261.5117 or email at clbunch@pvamu.edu.