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

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. The farms had to be large, though, to pay off the machines. All his siblings left, too.

Acre 99

Acre Crop Farming Farming 99

Modern Farmer

JUNE 30, 2023

After the Civil War, the sharecropping period often involved predatory practices, including low wages and unsafe conditions. I just didn’t want to do traditional… I don’t know, crop farming, just driving tractors every day.” But the process hasn’t always come easily. His brother and late father, Harvey Sr.,

Acre 98

Acre Sharecropping Processing Farming 98

Civil Eats

OCTOBER 24, 2023

Along with more fields and new water infrastructure, Brown’s wish list of upgrades includes cold storage, a washing and staging station, and tractor access—most of which require additional space, construction, and expensive permits. And despite the security of family property, there’s no room to expand. That’s the only way we survived.”

Cultivation 145

Cultivation Acre Farming Farming 145