Civil Eats

DECEMBER 10, 2024

When the owner of the land where Byron was sharecropping died, he willed Byron at least 10 acres. When he was nine, he started trucking the tobacco, or driving the loaded tractor from the fields where the hands were harvesting the leaves up to the barns where they were flue cured. It really is modern-day sharecropping.

Plantation 144

Plantation Farming Farming Acre 144

Food Environment and Reporting Network

DECEMBER 20, 2024

The soybeans and corn are processed into animal feed and ethanol, mostly outside the region; the cotton is exported to textile mills in Asia. 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 1949, U.D.

Acre 89

Acre Farming Farming Crop 89

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. It wasn’t much, but they had only to cross the river to hunt wild game, gather native fruits, and harvest natural dyes for pottery and textiles they sold in local markets.

Plantation 120

Plantation Acre Cultivation Crop 120