Local date farmer hopes to help usher in the next generation of Black farmers

Since 2002, Sam Cobb and his wife Maxine, have owned and operated their date farm, Sam Cobb Farms in Desert Hot Springs. 

Every Saturday, crowds of people tour the 60 acres of farmland that the Cobbs use to farm 7 varieties of dates, with Sam as their charismatic guide. 

“People who are interested in dates and how they grow, those are the ones who come. I tell them if you're interested, it's going to be a great tour because I'm a real farmer. I know my stuff. I'm a scientifically trained farmer. I'm an agronomist. So it's always good,” Sam Cobb says. 

Sam Cobb says his love of farming started to blossom when he was a young boy growing up in Fresno County, California. 

“The Voting Rights Act was passed…that's when I was just a little kid. I can remember just being like three and four years old. In the African American community, everyone was so happy and so excited. Everyone would say, “What do you want to be when you grow up?...They would get to me and I said I wanted to be a farmer,” says Cobb.  

Cobb says he was not always encouraged to follow his interests in agriculture. His parents, who were a part of the Great Migration, did not continue their family’s legacy of farming as it served as a painful memory of the past. 

“My parents left the south out of Mississippi, in 1948, in December 1948 and arrived in California. They were just young people in their early 20s. And I'll guarantee you this, they did not come to California to farm…Black people we come from slavery, and slavery was in agriculture,” Cobb says. 

Cobb continued to pursue his passion for farming throughout high school and college, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agricultural Education from Fresno State University. 

“We need to embrace all of our freedoms. Farming is great…it's within my blood,” 

After decades of working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cobb began farming dates full-time. 

“I worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 30 years. And while working for the USDA, I got transferred here to the Coachella Valley, and slowly fell in love with dates, and decided to grow them,” Cobb says.  

According to the Black Farmer’s Index, Cobb is likely the only Black date farmer in the United States. While Cobb wears this status proudly, he realizes that it points to a big disparity within the agriculture industry.

 “It's very important to represent the Black community in the farming space,” says Cobb.  

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that there are currently 40,000 Black farmers in America who own less than one percent of the nation’s farmland. 

Cobb says he wants to be a source of information and support for future Black farmers. 

“Now a lot of people are coming back into agriculture. They realize a lot of black farmers of black people are realizing they have a history in agriculture. And sadly, there's not a whole lot of people they can go to in reference, but if they can find Sam Cobb, they have found a true source because I am for real.”

He says he is working to usher in the next generation of Black farmers, starting with his own family tree.

“For my grandchildren, I would hope for them to study agriculture and plant science. So they will know how our family grows that dates because we grow good deeds, and you just have to be here to learn how it's done,” says Cobb.