Yahoo Finance Tractor Supply’s Retreat on Diversity Has Black Farmers Fuming
(Bloomberg) -- Tractor Supply Co.’s move to abandon its diversity and climate goals after criticism from a conservative activist is now sparking rebuke among another major customer base: Black farmers.
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The Tennessee-based farming product and livestock feed retailer is “pretty much saying they don’t want our business,” said John Boyd, the head of the National Black Farmers Association. “This sends the wrong message to our country at a time when we’re going backward on race relations.”
Boyd is calling on the company’s president, Hal Lawton, to resign, after the firm last week said that it would retire diversity, equity and inclusion targets. It will also eliminate DEI roles and withdraw its carbon emission goals in an effort to ensure its “activities and giving tie directly to our business.”
The move followed a social media campaign led by conservative commentator Robby Starbuck, who attacked the company’s commitment to “woke priorities” that he said don’t align with its customers.
The retailer is part of a growing number of US firms revising or deleting their DEI goals. Conservative-led attacks on such programs have intensified following last year’s Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action in university admissions. Some companies that were loudly touting their promises to nurture underrepresented groups amid the racial reckoning sparked by George Floyd’s murder in 2020 are now taking a different approach.
Efforts Rebuffed
Writing in the Tennessean in 2021, Tractor Supply’s Lawton had promised to increase “people of color at the manager level and above” by 50% at its more than 2,000 stores by 2026, and double the number of outlets where staff “mirror the communities we serve.” He also said the firm would increase funding to programs and education for Black people by 30%.
But the Virginia-based Boyd said he’s spent years trying to convince Tractor Supply representatives to come to his group’s annual meetings or support its educational and community initiatives, to no avail. This year, he was encouraged that the company responded to his proposals, only for his efforts to be rebuffed last week.
“Tractor Supply is showing us its real face,” says Boyd, whose group represents 130,000 Black farmers across the country. Tractor Supply didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Black people make up about 14% of the US population, yet Black farmers comprise just 1.4% of America’s agricultural producers and 0.5% of total agricultural sales, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Their farms tend to be smaller than those belonging to White farmers.
Economists and historians point to a clear link between the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow to the present-day challenges for Black people in agriculture. Land that was granted to formerly enslaved Black Americans was often returned to its White former owners after the Civil War, and legal and financial discrimination made it difficult for Black farmers to own land.
The Tractor Supply controversy has had minimal financial market impact on the $28 billion company, though it’s possible that eliminating programs could cut costs, said Joe Feldman, a retail analyst at Telsey Advisory Group. He read the company’s announcement last week as an effort to “ensure its customer base remains loyal.”
“Given it changed its policy, one would think the company heard enough negative feedback about its DEI effort,” he added. Shares in Tractor Supply are down about 2% since its announcement, paring this year’s gains to 22%, compared with a 16% rise in the S&P 500 as of Wednesday afternoon in New York.
Boyd acknowledged that any calls for his members or allies to avoid shopping at Tractor Supply may be hamstrung by limited retail options in rural areas. “There’s not a whole lot of alternatives other than the local seed store,” he said.
--With assistance from Shelly Banjo.
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