Democrat Senators are touting new legislation that would purchase national farmland and give it away to Black Americans for free.

Democrats Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Elizabeth Warren are sponsoring the the Justice for Black Farmers Act, which seems likely to be the most wide-ranging affirmative action program ever enacted if it’s signed into law. It’s not inaccurate to call the bill a reparations program.

I'm proud to team up with @ewarren and @SenGillibrand to introduce the Justice for Black Farmers Act.

We need to balance the scales after decades of systemic racism within @USDA have harmed Black farmers. https://t.co/aV7y8CcufX

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) November 24, 2020

The law establishes preferences for Black Americans within Department of Agriculture policy. Blacks would be granted free land purchased by the federal government, in total increments that appear to add up to $8 billion a year.

An undersecretary of a USDA “Equitable Land Access Service” would be entrusted with purchasing(using taxpayer funds) and redistributing land. The reparation bill appropriates for a massive 20,000 grants annually over ten years, adding up to a total redistribution package of $80 billion.

The under-secretary would be commissioned to “(1) purchase from willing sellers, at a price not greater than fair market value, available agricultural land in the United States; and (2) subject to section 205, convey grants of that land to eligible Black individuals at no cost to the eligible Black individuals.”

If the bill redistributes 160 acres per grant, it would ultimately end up transferring 1.6% of the total land in the continental United States for free.

Democrats cite a decline in the numbers of black farmers since the 1920’s as an impetus for the bill, pointing out that there were 1 million black farmers in 1920 and 50,000 today. Such logic ignores that the number of American farmers broadly has declined sharply as the United States transitioned to an industrial economy, and that millions of Black Americans who worked under poor conditions as sharecroppers in the American South have long since moved to northern cities.

The bill is somewhat similar to South African racial land redistribution policies, which differ primarily in that they forcibly nationalized land owned by Afrikaner farmers and redistributed them to South African Blacks. South Africa’s land reforms in the name of “equity” have proven to generally be a failure, with novel farmers unable to utilize the land they’ve been gifted in a manner beneficial to society. South Africa has transitioned from a bountiful agricultural society known as the “bread basket of Africa” to a net food importer, with experts pointing to arbitrary land redistribution as a factor in doing so.