Food Environment and Reporting Network

DECEMBER 20, 2024

In 1944, International Harvester tested the first mechanical cotton picker on a plantation just south of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Over the next two decades, tractors, mechanical harvesters, and chemical herbicides made sharecropping obsoleteyou no longer needed much labor to farm cotton or grains.

Acre 111

Acre Farming Crop Farming 111

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.

Food 139

Food Sharecropping Finance Farming 139

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 126

Plantation Acre Cultivation Crop 126