Mississippi Today
As agriculture has evolved in Mississippi, the state is losing its ‘middle class’ of farmers
In the early 1930s, Mississippi had over 300,000 farmers, the most ever recorded for the state in federal census records. The last survey, from 2017, listed just around 55,000.
In the 1930s, the average farm size was around 50 acres. Today, it’s over 300 acres.
For decades from the early to mid 20th Century, Black farmers outnumbered white farmers in the state. Today, 86% of Mississippi’s farmers are white.
While agriculture is still the top employer in the state, who farms, what they farm, and who they sell to has changed greatly over the last century. Victim to many of those changes, experts say, is the so-called “middle class” of farmers.
“When we look at the decrease in farms over time, it’s largely that group of farmers, that medium scale,” said John Green, director of the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University.
Research shows that input costs – for livestock, fertilizer, pesticides, fuel and other needs – have climbed 70% since 1970 when adjusted for inflation. Green explained that those costs leave farmers more at risk, especially with the harmful climate impacts, such as drought and floods, that Mississippi has seen in recent years.
“There’s a lot more vulnerability for those farmers when there’s a bad year, so it makes it harder to stay in the game,” Green said.
Land is also more expensive due to higher demand, making it harder for newer farmers to buy in and easier for older farmers to cash out.
“It’s a story that can be told in every community,” State Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson told Mississippi Today. “Grandpa and grandma had a farm, and the family wants to keep the farm. Who’s going to run it? Well, this (kid’s) got another job, that one’s moving off. What happens is the farm sits there, and then, slowly, suburbanization comes along, some developer says, ‘I’ll offer you so much for that land,’ and suddenly they don’t have the reason to keep that farm anymore.”
All of these factors are making it harder for farmers in the middle, Gipson explained: Small farmers, like the ones selling fruits and vegetables to farmers markets, will always have demand. Large operations, with technological advantages like an irrigation system, can weather a bad year.
“Most of our farmers in Mississippi have another job to pay the bills,” Gipson said. “That’s that middle group of farmers. They’re at most risk of getting out (of the business) because there comes a point at which the input costs are so expensive that it’s not worth it financially to keep going.”
But Gipson also pointed out that, despite Mississippi having only a tenth of the number of farms it once had, production from the agriculture sector is at an all-time high. With new technology, he explained, farmers can grow more with the same amount of land.
“The good news is we’ve seen our production of agriculture, as far as the number of products, the amount of products, food and fiber and timber, continue to go up,” Gipson said.
If production is at an all-time high, then why does it matter that Mississippi has only a fraction of the farms and farmers that it used to?
For one, farmers are getting older. As Green and two other MSU researchers wrote about recently, the average age of farmers in the U.S. grew from 50 to 57 since 1978. In Mississippi, the average is 59. Their research looks at barriers for new farmers entering the trade, as well as programs like 4-H trying to engage younger farmers and reverse the aging trend.
But also, the loss of middle-tier farms has disrupted the cultural and economic identity of rural areas around the state.
Carlton Turner, a Utica native, said his grandfather worked for years as a farmer on their family land until, eventually, there wasn’t enough money coming in and he had to find a new job. Today, Turner said, the job opportunities in his hometown are harder to come by.
“A town like Utica, that has a long history of agricultural production, the only industry here is a sawmill,” he said. “And that doesn’t provide enough jobs for the community, so the community has to go out to work in other areas.”
Turner, founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, is working to revive agricultural interest in rural, predominantly Black areas that have lost farms over the years. The loss of Black farmers in Mississippi, he said, came from both the Great Migration as well as the mechanization of farming, which reduced the need for labor.
“The food system went from being many local producers that were producing for themselves and for their local communities, to consolidating to larger farms and larger, commercial agricultural industries,” he said. “We've yielded a lot of that power away from our communities in which there's few people that are basically creating the industry and the food for many people.”
Turner also emphasized the wellness impacts of losing small and middle-tier farms, especially in one of the least healthy and most food insecure states. Restoring people’s connection with locally grown food would help reverse that trend, he explained.
“We have some of the most fertile land, but our (health statistics are) the lowest in the country,” he said. “That is directly connected to our food systems. We need more farmers producing high quality, locally sourced whole foods because we don't have the quality of health and wellness that we deserve as a state and as a community.”
Other local farmers are also working to fill in the gap Turner mentioned. Cindy Ayers Elliott, for instance, runs the 68-acre Foot Print Farms in Jackson, which aims to bring young people into agriculture and build the supply of locally grown, healthy foods.
In the 1930s, vegetables like sweet potatoes, cabbages, and tomatoes – not including commodity crops like corn and soybeans – made up over 160,000 acres of the state’s farmland, and tens of thousands of farms grew fruit like apples, pears, and peaches. Today, less than 40,000 acres are used for vegetables – again, excluding corn and soybeans – and just a few hundred farms grow fruit.
As far as solutions, Gipson pointed to workforce development programs that the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce has set up to reach young people, in addition to local 4-H clubs and the state’s Future Farmers of America chapter. He also said a priority is helping family farms set up succession plans, so that farms stay active for future generations.
“Farming today is high technology,” Gipson said, describing the computerized systems now used to harvest timber and row crops. “And it’s our young people who know how to do that. Connecting our young people to farms is the answer, not only for Mississippi's long term economic viability, because agriculture is far and away our largest industry, but also in terms of keeping our young people here.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1997
Dec. 22, 1997
The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers.
In the court’s 4–2 decision, Justice Mike Mills praised efforts “to squeeze justice out of the harm caused by a furtive explosion which erupted from dark bushes on a June night in Jackson, Mississippi.”
He wrote that Beckwith’s constitutional right to a speedy trial had not been denied. His “complicity with the Sovereignty Commission’s involvement in the prior trials contributed to the delay.”
The decision did more than ensure that Beckwith would stay behind bars. The conviction helped clear the way for other prosecutions of unpunished killings from the Civil Rights Era.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Medicaid expansion tracker approaches $1 billion loss for Mississippi
About the time people ring in the new year next week, the digital tracker on Mississippi Today’s homepage tabulating the amount of money the state is losing by not expanding Medicaid will hit $1 billion.
The state has lost $1 billion not since the start of the quickly departing 2024 but since the beginning of the state’s fiscal year on July 1.
Some who oppose Medicaid expansion say the digital tracker is flawed.
During an October news conference, when state Auditor Shad White unveiled details of his $2 million study seeking ways to cut state government spending, he said he did not look at Medicaid expansion as a method to save money or grow state revenue.
“I think that (Mississippi Today) calculator is wrong,” White said. “… I don’t think that takes into account how many people are going to be moved off the federal health care exchange where their health care is paid for fully by the federal government and moved onto Medicaid.”
White is not the only Mississippi politician who has expressed concern that if Medicaid expansion were enacted, thousands of people would lose their insurance on the exchange and be forced to enroll in Medicaid for health care coverage.
Mississippi Today’s projections used for the tracker are based on studies conducted by the Institutions of Higher Learning University Research Center. Granted, there are a lot of variables in the study that are inexact. It is impossible to say, for example, how many people will get sick and need health care, thus increasing the cost of Medicaid expansion. But is reasonable that the projections of the University Research Center are in the ballpark of being accurate and close to other studies conducted by health care experts.
White and others are correct that Mississippi Today’s calculator does not take into account money flowing into the state for people covered on the health care exchange. But that money does not go to the state; it goes to insurance companies that, granted, use that money to reimburse Mississippians for providing health care. But at least a portion of the money goes to out-of-state insurance companies as profits.
Both Medicaid expansion and the health care exchange are part of the Affordable Care Act. Under Medicaid expansion people earning up to $20,120 annually can sign up for Medicaid and the federal government will pay the bulk of the cost. Mississippi is one of 10 states that have not opted into Medicaid expansion.
People making more than $14,580 annually can garner private insurance through the health insurance exchanges, and people below certain income levels can receive help from the federal government in paying for that coverage.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, legislation championed and signed into law by President Joe Biden significantly increased the federal subsidies provided to people receiving insurance on the exchange. Those increased subsidies led to many Mississippians — desperate for health care — turning to the exchange for help.
White, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, Gov. Tate Reeves and others have expressed concern that those people would lose their private health insurance and be forced to sign up for Medicaid if lawmakers vote to expand Medicaid.
They are correct.
But they do not mention that the enhanced benefits authored by the Biden administration are scheduled to expire in December 2025 unless they are reenacted by Congress. The incoming Donald Trump administration has given no indication it will continue the enhanced subsidies.
As a matter of fact, the Trump administration, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is looking for ways to cut federal spending.
Some have speculated that Medicaid expansion also could be on Musk’s chopping block.
That is possible. But remember congressional action is required to continue the enhanced subsidies. On the flip side, congressional action would most likely be required to end or cut Medicaid expansion.
Would the multiple U.S. senators and House members in the red states that have expanded Medicaid vote to end a program that is providing health care to thousands of their constituents?
If Congress does not continue Biden’s enhanced subsidies, the rates for Mississippians on the exchange will increase on average about $500 per year, according to a study by KFF, a national health advocacy nonprofit. If that occurs, it is likely that many of the 280,000 Mississippians on the exchange will drop their coverage.
The result will be that Mississippi’s rate of uninsured — already one of the highest in the nation – will rise further, putting additional pressure on hospitals and other providers who will be treating patients who have no ability to pay.
In the meantime, the Mississippi Today counter that tracks the amount of money Mississippi is losing by not expanding Medicaid keeps ticking up.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1911
Dec. 21, 1911
Josh Gibson, the Negro League’s “Home Run King,” was born in Buena Vista, Georgia.
When the family’s farm suffered, they moved to Pittsburgh, and Gibson tried baseball at age 16. He eventually played for a semi-pro team in Pittsburgh and became known for his towering home runs.
He was watching the Homestead Grays play on July 25, 1930, when the catcher injured his hand. Team members called for Gibson, sitting in the stands, to join them. He was such a talented catcher that base runners were more reluctant to steal. He hit the baseball so hard and so far (580 feet once at Yankee Stadium) that he became the second-highest paid player in the Negro Leagues behind Satchel Paige, with both of them entering the National Baseball Hame of Fame.
The Hall estimated that Gibson hit nearly 800 homers in his 17-year career and had a lifetime batting average of .359. Gibson was portrayed in the 1996 TV movie, “Soul of the Game,” by Mykelti Williamson. Blair Underwood played Jackie Robinson, Delroy Lindo portrayed Satchel Paige, and Harvey Williams played “Cat” Mays, the father of the legendary Willie Mays.
Gibson has now been honored with a statue outside the Washington Nationals’ ballpark.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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