Remove Crop Remove Farmland Remove Sharecropping
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Transforming the Delta

Food Environment and Reporting Network

World Wildlife Fund, an organization with a longstanding interest in how agriculture affects the planet, is pushing one idea it thinks would benefit not just the Delta but the country as a whole: Delta farmers could start growing more food that people actually eatspecialty crops, such as fruits, vegetables, and other high-value foods.

Acre 99
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Black Earth: A Family’s Journey from Enslavement to Reclamation

Civil Eats

In a county that was intentionally poisonedand a world suffering from a changing climatehe is reviving the soil under his feet by transitioning away from pesticide-dependent row crops like tobacco to industrial hemp, which is known to sequester carbon and remediate soil, and using earth-friendly organic and regenerative methods.

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Meet the Arkansas Farmers Turning Sweet Potatoes into Spirits

Modern Farmer

Prime farmland, it attracted countless farmers, including the Black farmers seeking to fulfill the promise of “40 acres and a mule” that followed the American Civil War. After the Civil War, the sharecropping period often involved predatory practices, including low wages and unsafe conditions. But the process hasn’t always come easily.

Acre 98
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Urban Farms are a Lifeline for Food-Insecure Residents. Will New Jersey Finally Make Them Permanent?

Modern Farmer

In the 1700s and 1800s, farmers in the “Garden State” relied on enslaved people to herd and slaughter animals, grow crops, maintain their meadowlands, and construct their farms. Porter’s farm faces another common challenge: he doesn’t own his farmland.

Food 119
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The Future of Resilient Agricultural Communities in California Is Alive in Allensworth

The Equation

We must not forget that at that time the economic options for Black Americans were scarcely more than sharecropping on former plantations or brutal industrial labor in northern cities; political and social freedoms were systematically denied. Colonel Allensworth envisioned having a Black community where people would be free and independent.

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California Will Help BIPOC Collective Cultivate Land Access for Underserved Farmers

Civil Eats

Together, BIPOC growers own less than 2 percent of all farmland in the country. “You need at least $1 million to purchase farmland in California, and that doesn’t even include the tools, infrastructure, resources, and the labor.” million grant in 2022 to Ujamaa for the purchase of a medium-sized plot of land in Yolo County.

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Oral History Project Preserves Black and Indigenous Food Traditions

Civil Eats

Adeeb: There was a loss of farmland, farm traditions, knowledge, and skills being passed from one generation to the other due to migration. We’d like to take that further and look at the Indigenous seed-keeping skills and technologies that develop the ‘crops’ we have today. That’s an important part of our work.

Food 111