John Ficara

Louden Marshall squatted in the dirt roadway between his chicken houses and his family's house to tie his grandson's shoe. Marshall's son, Louden III, his head slightly bowed, kept on walking.

John Ficara took a photograph.

There was a lot of story in that picture.

Louden Marshall farms the Cumberland County land his grandfather farmed. It came to Marshall when his father died. Marshall's son had announced just days before that he wasn't going to be a farmer. Marshall could understand why.

"It's difficult," he said on the phone this week. "I don't recommend it to anyone."

That frozen moment among the Marshall family is one of more than 120 photographs in Ficara's "Black Farmers in America," a book that was four years in the making. It chronicles what Ficara believes may be the last generation of black farmers in the United States.

"I saw it as a piece of American history that was kind of going," Ficara said.

A slide show of Ficara's work -- along with Ficara -- will be at Virginia Tech tonight as part of the university's Black History Month observances. His presentation will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Wesley Foundation building, 209 W. Roanoke St. followed by a book signing and reception.

Ficara was working for Newsweek magazine when the project began. There was a story on black farmers coming, and he was sent out to do a little research. One of the first farmers he met was Luther Marable of Thomas County, Ga.

"He had a farm that was in the throes of going downhill," Ficara said.

Marable's son, James, was just out of high school, where he'd been a member of Future Farmers of America. The Marables tried to get loans from the Farmers Home Administration. It didn't work. The farm failed.

Luther Marable died. His wife, Ruth, still lives on the farm, but the land is leased to another farmer. James Marable drives a truck and hopes to one day turn his family's farm back into a successful business.

"That was my introduction to it," Ficara said.

The rise of corporate farming, the consolidation of farms, globalization and the lure of bright lights and weekends off have eroded family farms, but black farmers have confronted additional impediments, some thrown up by the federal government.

The Farmers Home Administration has systematically discriminated against black farmers. During one season, the agency lent money to nearly 16,000 farmers. Only 209 of those loans went to black farmers. In some cases, loans were promised but never delivered.

In 1999, the U.S. Department of Agriculture settled a class action lawsuit based on those incidents that gave $623 million and forgave more than $17 million in loans to 13,000 black farmers.

The cash came too late for many. Their farms were gone.

In the 1920s, more than 900,000 black farmers tended 15 million acres in the United States.

Now there are fewer than 18,000 black farmers on 2.2 million acres. Marshall said none of his black friends in Cumberland County is a farmer.

"It's hard to do it like you used to do it when my daddy was coming along," Marshall said.

In those days, a small farmer could diversify -- raise a few hogs, a few cattle, a little grain. But even Marshall's father held down a job off the farm.

Marshall still raises cattle, but his mainstay is raising pullets for Tyson's Foods. He has two chicken houses where he raises 30,000 birds at a time. They come to him as chicks, and leave about five months later as laying hens.

Contracting with an agribusiness giant isn't the only way for a small farm to keep going, Marshall said.

"There's a lot of talk about finding niches and developing alternative crops," he said.

But those things are risky. And farming is risky and taxing enough.

When Marshall took over the farm, he was still working for the state health department. His wife tended to the farm while he was at work. Then her health started to fail. He took early retirement so he could keep the farm going.

In his retirement, he spends a couple of hours feeding chickens each morning. Then he tends to the cattle. In the time between one flock's leaving and another's arriving, there's work to be done cleaning the chicken houses and preparing them for the next batch. There's hay to be put up in the summer.

"On a small farm, there's plenty to do," Marshall said.

He thought last Saturday would be an easy day, but a ventilation fan in one of the chicken houses stopped working. Marshall worked all day rewiring it.

Ficara, Brooklyn-born and Long Island-raised, came to respect his subjects.

"They're basically really good people," he said. "Their lives are made up of family and church.

"I admire their sense of tenacity. ... They continue to persevere."

Perseverance seems basic to the makeup of men like Louden Marshall.

"I guess farmers generally farm on until they die," he said.

When Marshall's generation is finished farming, a way of life and a piece of America may die with them.