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

Civil Eats

When the owner of the land where Byron was sharecropping died, he willed Byron at least 10 acres. as an account executive in the real estate market for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. It really is modern-day sharecropping. He made good money, but rather than putting it into the farm, he splurged.

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Transforming the Delta

Food Environment and Reporting Network

Over the next two decades, tractors, mechanical harvesters, and chemical herbicides made sharecropping obsoleteyou no longer needed much labor to farm cotton or grains. Taylor was an old family friend who had made a fortune in real estate, but who also had a thousand acres of certified organic land that he was farming almost as a hobby.

Acre 52
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California Will Help BIPOC Collective Cultivate Land Access for Underserved Farmers

Civil Eats

After six years of enriching the soil and cultivating neighborly relationships, however, We Grow Farms is up against an insurmountable challenge facing many farms and pastures across the state: the real estate market. While Hawkins is sympathetic to the need, he says the farm’s uprooting will come at a great cost.