Small communities in the Mississippi Delta are struggling. And even though the government pours millions and millions into the region each year, lawmakers are not overly concerned with helping them. Farm subsidies benefit large commercial farmers with lots of land.
The surrounding (black) communities and smaller farmers are supposed to receive Rural Development Grants, but the amount of money doled out through the grants doesn’t even come close to approximating the subsidies commercial farmers receive. According to the Washington Post, the federal government distributed more than a billion dollars in subsidies but only $54.8 million in Rural Development Grants last year.
From 2001 to 2005, the federal government spent nearly $1.2 billion in agricultural subsidies to boost farmers’ incomes and invigorate local economies in this poverty-stricken region of the Mississippi Delta.
Most residents are black, but less than 5 percent of the money went to black farmers. They own relatively little land, and so they generally do not qualify for the payments. Ninety-five percent of the money went to large, commercial farms, virtually all of which have white owners.
Guess what? Agriculture Department officials declined to comment for the story. The general defense of subsidies is that the benefits trickle down to the farm’s surrounding communities, spurring growth and economic development. And yet, small, mainly black communities in the Mississippi Delta are wasting away to nothing.
[WP]
I am from the MS Delta. Bennie Thompson is the rep from that area and he was the ranking Democrat on the Agriculture committee. He was in line to chair that committee, but choose to leave and join the Homeland Security Committee. He’s now the chair of the Homeland Security committee. He got a lot of backlash from leaving the agriculture committee since most of the Delta consists of farms.