By Dr. Ridgely Mu’min Muhammad and Abdul Arif Muhammad, Esq.

A slanderous article, titled “‘Game the system’? Nonprofits, including Farrakhan-tied group, enjoy windfall from farm subsidies,” was written by Emily Boyd Walker, and published on March 9, 2014 at Foxnews.com. The Scriptures teach us that the “Devil is a liar.” And he “Accuses the righteous continually.” 

As the Nation of Islam’s farm manager and legal general counsel, we respond to these wicked and vicious lies against the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and herein uncover these well dressed lies. 

The TRUTH IS.

  1. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has not received ANY government funding, whether in the nature of farm subsidies, or otherwise, as has been erroneously and wickedly reported.
  2. The label “not in good standing” is applied to ANY registered corporation that has not updated a single form called “Annual Report.” This is a very typical occurrence. That oversight has since been corrected with the Illinois Secretary of State and all legal requirements have been met with the Illinois Secretary of State.
  3. The Nation of Islam owns a 1600 acre Farm in Georgia, which it operates as any of the other 800,000 small farms in the United States.
  4. The Farm made application for appropriate farm subsidies through a Georgia Branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These are lawful subsidies for various farm related activities that any Georgia farm is entitled to obtain.
  5. In an article published in the Final Call newspaper December 19, 2013 we indicated that U.S. Farming subsidies received by farms in Terrell County, Ga., from 1995 to 2012, totaled $89,499,000. The Nation of Islam farm received a tiny fraction of that amount and was 146th on the list of those who received funds during this same time period.
  6. Those farm subsidies (grants) were given and issued directly to the Farm in Georgia.  Not one disbursement was sent to Chicago, or to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.
  7. Moreover, the Farm in Georgia has not received any government subsidies since 2011. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had changed their rules and procedures, which imposed retroactive restrictions, for the years 2009-2011.  These retroactive requirements were unacceptable to us, and consequently, that which was given, was returned back to the Government.

Make no mistake about it, this is a working farm with real produce for the people it serves. When it was purchased in 1991 it became the largest Black-owned and -operated farm in South Georgia. We transformed worn out, weed-infested, hard rock clay land into arable land and workable soil and brought back many of the birds and wildlife.

We have purchased over $250,000 worth of farm equipment and trucks. We have our own flour mill and commercial sifter, which can produce 800 lbs of flour in an 8-hour day. And that farm produces the best-tasting watermelons in the country.

On a yearly basis we produce 8,000 lbs of flour, 400,000 lbs of watermelons, 12,000 lbs of different vegetables, 100,000 lbs of wheat, 100,000 lbs of field corn and 200,000 lbs of peanuts. We deliver produce to 8 states, and whole wheat flour and other goods to 35 cities. And we have provided jobs in the area.

The REAL motive for attacking a small Black farm that has made barren earth productive again, is because The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has publicly and boldly stood up for the small American farmer as no one has.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is not a man that can be bought off with any price. He said during our February 23, 2014 Saviours’ Day Message in Detroit, that there was not enough money in Fort Knox, or that the Federal Reserve can print, that could buy him, and make him sell out the Mission of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the aspirations of a people who yearn to be free, justified and equal.  This point is most strongly made by the Minister, in Episode 49, of “The Time And What Must Be Done” (which aired on December 14, 2013)

He states:

“Dear Black people, a Warning to you:  In the Nixon administration they came to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and they offered him “a dollar for every dollar of wealth” that The Nation of Islam had created under Elijah Muhammad’s dynamic leadership. Some say our wealth was $40 million dollars—some say $80 million.  But the government offered to match us “dollar for dollar.”  But guess what?  The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said when he read what they offered, he told me: “There were too many strings attached…”  So he rejected it.

I am saying this to all of you who stand with me:  They will not be able to turn me!  But they will be working to turn those of you who come after me.  And if they offer you anything, look carefully into it, lest The Nation will no longer be tied to the principles that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad desired for us:  To make us an independent nation on some of this Earth that we can call our own.”

A similar offer for Government funding was made to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in the 1970’s when he was the Minister of Mosque No. 7, in Harlem, New York.  The Minister turned down the Governments offer.  We should clearly know and understand that the Minister is a man that cannot be bought off.

His monumental 58-week series delivered in 2013, entitled “The Time And What Must Be Done” (available on www.noi.org) brought to light the crisis of the American Farmer and the assault on them from corporate giants who are now endangering the health of the American people. These Episodes were: Episode 36, titled: “Farming is the Engine of our National Life.”(aired on September 14, 2013); Episode 37, titled: “Wicked policy and America’s National Interests,” (aired  September 21, 2013); and Episode 38, titled: “Wicked policy and America’s National Interests-Part 2,” (aired on September 28, 2013).  In episode 36 of the broadcast Minister Farrakhan states:

“So “farming” and “animal husbandry” are the first professions, and are the engine of every nation.

“According to the most recent United States Census of Agriculture (2007), “farming,” as an “occupation,” has decreased from 64 percent of the labor force in 1850 to less than 1 percent in 2013.  Here we are, in 2013:  There are over 313,000,000 people living in the United States, and of that population, less than 1 percent claim “farming” as an occupation; and from over 6,500,000 farms owned by farmers in America at one time, America now is down to 2.2 million farms.  So what we are looking at is the destruction of The Engine of National Life.”

For the ex-slave, land ownership is the basis of independence, the pathway to wealth.…From 1865 (the time of “Emancipation”) to 1910, Blacks had risen from slavery—where we owned nothing—to acquiring 16 million acres of land, mostly in the South.  However, increased debt load, plus a rash of lynching over the 30-year period from 1890 to 1920, effectively drove millions of Blacks off their land in the South into the ghettoes of the North to work for the northern industrialists.  As of the date of this message, Black farmers own less than 4 million acres of land—a 75 percent decrease of what we were able to amass by 1910, 45 years after slavery!”

In addressing the state of American farming and the American diet he states:

“In 1970, out of the $75 billion that Americans spent on food, over half ($40 billion) went directly to the farmers.  However, by 1998 Americans spent over $450 billion on food—but the farmer only received just over $100 billion for the raw product that went into the “food,” which is a loss of 75 percent of what the farmer used to make! …

On food being used as a genocidal weapon of mass destruction against Black People, the American People and poor and oppressed people throughout the world the Minister states in part in this Episode 36:

“Now this Mr. Holdren, the “czar” of science and technology under President Obama who wrote a paper, and then a book, on “limiting population growth” by putting sterilants in water and in staple foods—I would like to ask Mr. Holdren, since you are now an “adviser” to our president: Are you still of the same mind as the man who wrote the article and the book? Because these policies that you talked about are still in practice, as government policy, today:  They sterilize us; or, they force us to be sterilized.  This goes on in the prison, and it goes on heavily among the Native people.

It is the revealing of this truth that has caused Satan and his minions to engage in an attack to defame the good name, character and reputation of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Why not talk about the  $700 billion given by the Government to the Banks in the bailout of 2008-2009? What about the $16 trillion given out by the Federal Reserve to its banker friends all over the world in 2009?  The international bankers sneaked through the 100 year anniversary of the Federal Reserve (1913-2013) which they own, without the American people, even looking up to see their wealth floating away.

The clear aim of the enemies attack on the good name, reputation and integrity of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is to undermine support for the program “Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint” that was launched in October 2013, for the acquisition of LAND for the creation of an independent foundation for a people whose economic base has been systematically destroyed.

The enemies of the rise of Black people are ruthless in attacking anyone who attempts to advance the independent economic development of Black people. For 400 years these satanic forces have proven to be the masters at “gaming the system.” It is they who are “not in good standing” with the Lord of the Worlds in this final hour. And it is The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan who is here to represent that God and that Truth to the American people and the world.