Civil Eats

DECEMBER 27, 2023

The food system bears a disproportionate impact on communities of color, ranging from the farmworkers struggling to feed themselves even as they harvest the nation’s produce to the BIPOC farmers who are often shut out from crucial financing and other resources. Here is our best food justice reporting this year.

Food 124

Food Sharecropping Finance Farming 124

Food Environment and Reporting Network

DECEMBER 20, 2024

Over the next two decades, tractors, mechanical harvesters, and chemical herbicides made sharecropping obsoleteyou no longer needed much labor to farm cotton or grains. In 1920, Blacks owned or operated 14 percent of all farmland in the U.S.; The farms had to be large, though, to pay off the machines. today it is less than 2 percent.

Acre 89

Acre Farming Farming Crop 89

Food Environment and Reporting Network

DECEMBER 31, 2024

The United States later financed a mill that would be run by a farmer cooperative. Early financers included Eric Varvel, then the CEO of Credit Suisse in the Asia-Pacific region and Steadfast Financial, a New York hedge fund with over $8 billion under management. “Oh, f**k,” he remembered thinking.

Plantation 115

Plantation Acre Cultivation Crop 115