IN 1920 ACCORDING TO FEDERAL DATA, THERE WERE ABOUT 925,000 BLACK FARMERS, OR ABOUT 14% OF ALL FARMERS.

A CENTURY LATER, THERE WERE ONLY 42,000 OR 1%.

MUCH OF THAT IS A LEGACY OF SYSTEMIC DISCRIMINATION IN AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT PROGRAMS.

ALI ROGIN REPORTS ON HOW THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS TRYING TO HELP FARMERS WHO HAVE HISTORICALLY BEEN EXCLUDED FROM GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS.

ALI: TODAY, BLACK FARMERS OWNED LESS THAN 1% OF U.S.

FARMLAND, ACCORDING TO THE AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT’S LATEST FARMER CENSUS BUT EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY TO HELP THESE FARMERS RECLAIM THEIR LOST LAND.

LAST MONTH, THE USDA ISSUED OVER $2.2 BILLION IN PAYMENTS TO BLACK AND OTHER MINORITY FARMERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

IT’S A MOVE THE DEPARTMENT HOPES WILL OFFSET DECADES…

According to federal data, there were about 925,000 Black farmers in 1920 in the United States. A century later, that number has declined to only about 42,000. John Boyd Jr., founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, joins Ali Rogin to discuss efforts by the Biden administration to help farmers who have been historically excluded from government assistance programs.

Australia’s first plant-protein isolate manufacturer, Australian Plant Proteins (APP), has entered voluntary administration, with industry leaders expressing frustration at the lack of government support, a reliance on imports, and drop in R&D investment in a sector with “enormous opportunity” for Australia.

APP was founded in 2016 by Melbourne-based agricultural investment management company, EAT Group founders Phil McFarlane and Brendan McKeegan.

It spent four years developing and patenting an innovative manufacturing process that extracted protein from pulses without using enzymes or solvents. This clean…

Tokyo | China Evergrande Group, the property developer at the centre of China’s real estate crisis, will be broken up and liquidated under a Hong Kong court order, in a move which has sent shockwaves through the country’s financial system and could ultimately weaken demand for Australian exports.

While Evergrande has a limited presence in Australia, the impact of the forced sale of assets and debt default on China’s beleaguered property sector and the broader economy had been identified by the Reserve Bank of Australia as a risk to Chinese demand for Australian goods and services.

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Chinese property developer Kaisa has reached an agreement with creditors for partial repayment of its debt, the company said Tuesday, a positive development as it battles to avoid liquidation.

After eight years of financial heartbreak and court battles, the liquidator of Clive Palmer’s former Queensland Nickel refinery says it has paid the company’s creditors in full. 

The Yabulu Nickel Refinery, owned by Queensland Nickel Industries, was the Townsville region’s largest private employer when it collapsed in 2016, owing hundreds of millions of dollars. 

More than 700 workers lost their jobs.

Liquidator FTI announced yesterday that outstanding creditors had been paid $300 million — a full settlement of claims, it said.

End of saga in sight?

FTI senior managing director Kelly Trenfield said when FTI was first appointed, it estimated QNI owed about $800 million.

Many of those claims had been settled, removed or reduced over the…

In the third quarter of 2023, the number of bankruptcy declarations of EU businesses decreased by 5.8% compared with the previous quarter. Overall, the number of bankruptcy declarations in 2023 has been higher since the pre-pandemic period (i.e. the fourth quarter of 2019). 

In the same period, registrations of new businesses slightly increased for the third quarter in a row. Compared with the second quarter of this year, they went up by 0.7%. Generally, the number of business registrations in the second and third quarters of 2023 has been higher than in the 2015-2022 period. 

This information comes from data on business registrations and bankruptcies published by Eurostat today. Since February 2023, the…

The insolvency regulator – Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) – has proposed mandatory disclosures about the status of a corporate debtor, being registered or not, as an MSME (micro, small or medium enterprise) in accordance with the provisions of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Act, 2006.

The regulator has also proposed that if available documents suggest the debtor qualifies as an MSME, the resolution professional may obtain an Udyam Registration Certificate on a case-by-case basis before making the disclosure in the information memorandum (IM).

These changes have been proposed after several instances came to fore where the classification of a corporate debtor as an MSME has been…

With last week’s Reserve Bank of Australia board minutes indicating official interest rates will stay high well into next year, household debt management will remain a huge priority for Australians.

Loan repayments are crippling family budgets at a time when cost-of-living pressures are squeezing spending, and credit-card balances are rising to plug the gap. Debt consolidation has become the ultimate cure to manage the total debt burden as Aussies work to crunch over $18 billion in credit-card balances accruing interest.

RBA data shows the average lending rate for credit-card balance is at whopping 17.98 per cent, so debt consolidation — rolling multiple loans into one — has become a popular way to manage debt with a single due…

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing July 11 on medical debt. The AHA submitted a statement for the hearing that highlighted how the quality of insurance coverage is a driver of medical debt, saying that coverage for many patients is either insufficient or unavailable. The AHA discussed hospital and health system efforts offering financial and other assistance, and that hospitals absorb billions of dollars in losses for patients who cannot pay their bills, mainly due to inadequate commercial insurance coverage. To address the issue, the AHA urged Congress to restrict the sale of high-deductible health plans to individuals with the ability to afford the associated cost-sharing; prohibit the sale of…