U.S. taxpayers have shelled out tens of 1000’s of {dollars} in recent times to the U.S. Division of Agriculture for analysis on LGBT points, the type of funding now underneath scrutiny by the Trump administration.
The analysis depends on conducting interviews – in a single case for $373 per Zoom name – to discover a researcher’s speculation of widespread discrimination.
As an illustration, one taxpayer-funded analysis grant studied “queer farmers quality of life in Pennsylvania,” federal information present, one in all a number of grants of its variety.
The Sustainable Agriculture Analysis and Training Initiatives – a federally funded analysis arm of the U.S. Division of Agriculture – paid $14,997 for the 2018 grant.
Whereas this grant is comparatively small, there are others, and critics argue the spending is a distraction from serving to farmers and reducing meals costs, which soared in the course of the Biden administration alongside this type of analysis funding.
The aforementioned 2018 queer farmers grant went to Pennsylvania State College for a mission titled: “Sexuality and Sustainable Agriculture: Examining Queer Farmers’ Quality of Life in Pennsylvania.”
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The grant proposal says the subject is “woefully understudied.”
“The deeply entrenched assumption of heteronormativity in farming has excluded queer farmers from full inclusion and benefits from agriculture, even within sustainable agriculture,” the grant’s proposal summary stated.
The graduate scholar who assisted with the mission, Michaela Hoffelmeyer, introduced the findings to the Rural Sociological Society Annual Assembly in Richmond, Virginia.
Her analysis highlighted a few of the challenges confronted by queer farmers, reporting that “findings suggest that transgender, non-binary, and women farmers faced additional hurdles” however create assist networks to beat these challenges.
Hoffelmeyer has since gone on to affix the college on the College of Wisconsin, the place she has change into a voice within the media and public coverage on LGBT points.
Hoffelmeyer says on the college web site that she applies “feminist, queer, and labor theories” in her analysis to “inform agricultural programming and policy on how to make shifts to support viability, well-being, and sustainability.”
The school advisor for Hoffelmeyer’s mission, Penn State College Assistant Professor Kathleen Sexsmith, oversaw one other taxpayer-funded mission alongside the identical strains.
Latinx Gender Identities
Sexsmith’s 2021-2024 grant for $14,923 was awarded in the course of the Biden administration and was titled: “Farming as a Latinx: Analyzing how ethnic and gender identities shape Latino/a participation in sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania.”
The grant proposal factors to the shift from white farmer within the U.S. to Hispanic farmers due to immigration and takes a second to think about Hispanic masculinity.
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“How do rural Latin American masculinities become reproduced or reshaped in the U.S. as they establish themselves as sustainable farmers, and how does is it impact the ability of women and men to meet sustainable agriculture goals?” the grant’s proposal summary reads.
The researcher performed 40 interviews over Zoom, averaging about 45 minutes, placing the taxpayer value at about $373 per Zoom name.
“Initially, the project aimed to interview farmers directly, but due to the difficulties in accessing this hard-to-reach population, the focus shifted to institutional perspectives,” the report stated.
The researcher stated within the ultimate report that Hispanic farmers undergo from systemic discrimination.
Queer Farmers’ Relationships
One other $15,000 grant within the federal database is titled: “Gender, Sexuality, and Social Sustainability: Exploring Queer Farmers’ Relationships, Ethics, and Practices in the Midwest.”
That 2022 grant went to the College of Notre Dame in response to a grant proposal promising to develop “a more comprehensive understanding of queer farmers’ experiences.”
The proposal for that grant posited that “we still have much to learn about the specific ways that narratives which posit heterosexuality and cisgender identities as ‘normal’ continue to uphold hegemonic power dynamics within alternative agriculture.”
The analysis’s ultimate report stated “findings show that queer farmers often struggle to find safe, supportive work or learning opportunities as a result of how other farmers, customers, and community members perceive their gender or sexuality, and even though many queer farmers having family connections to farming, they struggle to secure access to land because their family’s agricultural or social values don’t align with theirs.”
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The school advisors for all three tasks didn’t reply to a request for remark or declined to remark to The Heart Sq..
President Donald Trump signed an government order upon taking workplace banning federal funding for Variety, Fairness and Inclusion tasks, initiating a purge throughout the federal authorities.
Since then, Elon Musk and the Division of Authorities Effectivity have been combing via federal spending information, exposing controversial taxpayer-funded tasks, lots of which the Trump administration has since terminated.
Musk and the Trump administration have confronted authorized challenges to those cuts, however the administration’s cost-cutting momentum has been fueled by examples of every kind of controversial federal spending, notably on DEI and LGBT points.
The USDA stated in a information launch in February that it had “begun a complete evaluate of contracts, personnel, and worker trainings and DEI applications.
“In many cases, programs funded by the Biden administration focused on DEI initiatives that are contrary to the values of millions of American taxpayers,” USDA added.
Syndicated with permission from The Heart Sq..
