Breeding Farms
Definition:
Noun. Breeding Farms is a term found in Black American oral history and public discourse to describe coercive reproduction under U.S. chattel slavery. Oral histories shared across Black American communities teach that, after the 1808 ban on importing enslaved people, enslavers increasingly relied on forced reproduction to expand the enslaved labor force and preserve wealth.
The term includes the control of intimate relationships, pregnancy, childbirth, family formation, and the sale of children born into slavery. Historical scholars document reproductive coercion, sexual violence, family separation, and the commodification of enslaved people.
Note: Historians debate the prevalence and evidentiary basis of dedicated commercial institutions explicitly organized as “breeding farms,” but the broader system of forced and controlled reproduction was a profound form of dehumanization.