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. When he was fifteen, a tractor flipped over on his father and killed him. But this farm is different: It produces rice seeds. All his siblings left, too.

Acre 99

Acre Crop Farming Farming 99

Civil Eats

DECEMBER 10, 2024

Photo credit: Cornell Watson) Ideally, wed get this sweet corn in the ground today, he says, indicating a bag of organic seed and a nearby half-acre plot of loose brown soil. When the owner of the land where Byron was sharecropping died, he willed Byron at least 10 acres. It really is modern-day sharecropping. They must be pets?

Plantation 144

Plantation Farming Farming Acre 144

Food Environment and Reporting Network

DECEMBER 31, 2024

The company has replaced its trucks and tractors with mules and water buffalo and has vowed not to expand its operations into standing forest. Seed funds came from wealthy friends and friends of friends, some of whom told me they hadn’t fully appreciated what they were supporting. “Oh, f**k,” he remembered thinking.

Plantation 125

Plantation Acre Cultivation Crop 125