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Black farmers eager for first hearing in fake-seed case

Black farmers will have their first official federal court hearing in their class-action lawsuit against the billion-dollar Stine Seed Company on Thursday, August 2 at 2 p.m.

U. S. District Judge John T. Fowlkes Jr. will preside over the hearing, which will be on the 9th floor of the Clifford Davis and Odell Horton Federal Building at 167 N. Main.

Thomas Burrell, president of the 15,000-member Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA) headquartered in Memphis, said the farmers are elated to get Stine Seed Company in the courtroom. From Burrell’s vantage point, the farmers have an “air tight case of how they (Stine) targeted and sold fake soybeans seeds to black farmers.”

 The lawsuit was filed under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act of 1970. 

Bishop David A. Hall, an avid farmer and a Church Of God In Christ pastor, said he purchased nearly $100,000 in fake soybean seeds from the Iowa-based seed giant. 

After an extremely poor yield of soybeans during the harvest in 2017, the farmers became suspicious and had Stine’s soybean seeds tested at the Mississippi State University School of Agriculture in Starkville, Miss.  Their lawyers will make the case that test results revealed the germination was zero percent.

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