Mississippi
A Democratic governor in Mississippi? Here’s how it could happen.
![A Democratic governor in Mississippi? Here’s how it could happen. A Democratic governor in Mississippi? Here’s how it could happen.](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NiBWgC_AzjQ1_ea8_eYXPywKvqw=/0x38:1920x1043/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24824330/MississippiDemocrats_Vox_JoanWong_PVickers.png)
JACKSON, Mississippi — Mississippi isn’t that Republican.
Although Republicans have a monopoly on statewide office and supermajorities in the state legislature, Mississippi is a lighter shade of red than outsiders might think. It has been consistently easy in recent years for Democrats to get up to 45 percent of the vote here, but nearly impossible for them to top 50.
“In Mississippi, if you’re winning by double digits, that’s a real blowout,” said Austin Barbour, a longtime GOP strategist in the state.
Of course, close doesn’t count for much in electoral politics. But that history of close top-of-the-ticket races in the Magnolia State — combined with a compelling Democratic candidate and a not terribly popular Republican incumbent — means that this year’s gubernatorial election has become one of Democrats’ top targets in an odd year.
In 2023, their hope is that Brandon Presley, a longtime elected public service commissioner from the northeast corner of the state with a fondness for Diet Mountain Dew and folksy aphorisms, can somehow break their streak and win the state’s odd-year gubernatorial election. To do so, Presley would have to beat incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves, who has a formidable war chest and a well-oiled political machine, but who is also tarnished by scandal and has one of the lowest approval ratings of any governor in the country.
Presley will also have to motivate the state’s Black voters to turn out, persuade the state’s remaining swing voters to support him, and do absolutely nothing to motivate the Trump base, who voted in record numbers in 2020. If everything goes right as he navigates those dynamics and the state’s convoluted political geography, he’d become the first Democrat to win the governor’s mansion since 1999.
Mississippi politics, explained
Mississippi is both the Blackest and perhaps the most racially polarized state in the United States. Roughly 37 percent of the population is Black, and those Mississippians almost invariably vote for Democrats. In 2020, when Donald Trump won the Magnolia State by a 16-point margin, exit polls showed that 81 percent of white voters supported him, but only 5 percent of Black voters. This divide is shown clearly on the map of the state: Where Black voters cluster, Democrats win. And while racial politics is the primary factor in a state still associated with the civil rights movement’s struggle against Jim Crow, its patchwork political geography also plays an important role in shaping the political landscape.
The white voters in the state that Presley needs to win include both ancestral Democrats who have swung toward the GOP in the Trump era and well-educated establishment Republicans who are appalled by Trump. Even if Mississippi Democrats can successfully woo a significant number of those voters and turn out a significant number of Black voters, a too-lopsided defeat in Republican-leaning areas can still doom them. Mississippi Democrats have to be lucky in all areas of the state; Mississippi Republicans only have to be lucky in one.
“I think enough of your white voters are going to have to say, ‘I think Brandon can do a better job,’” said Ronnie Musgrove, the state’s last Democratic governor. “There’s nothing about him that really scares them. African American voters have got to believe that he can do a better job for all communities.”
Mississippi’s complicated political map, explained
Mississippi’s convoluted political geography exacerbates the challenge Presley faces. He has to overwhelmingly win both rural and urban Black voters while winning enough white voters, not just in prosperous suburbs and booming college towns, but in remote rural enclaves as well.
The state’s Democratic strongholds, which are also the most heavily Black parts of the state, are the Mississippi Delta and the state capital of Jackson. The former is a rural stretch of land nestled between the banks of the Mississippi River and the Yazoo River that includes some of the most heavily African American jurisdictions in the country. It consists of some of the richest farmland in the United States and is populated by people with some of the lowest incomes. Its population is also rapidly shrinking as residents move out for economic opportunity.
Jackson has been troubled in recent years, dealing with a major water crisis that left residents without clean water and a spike in violent crime that has left the city with the highest homicide rate in the country. Although Jackson has prosperous sections with shiny new beer gardens and a Whole Foods, it also has deeply impoverished neighborhoods in the south of the city where ramshackle houses stand on streets without sidewalks and public parks are littered with fallen tree limbs.
The rest of the state is divided up in ways that don’t lend themselves to easy characterization. Perhaps the backbone of the Mississippi GOP is the Gulf Coast, which was one of the first parts of the state to go Republican at a federal level. Gerald Blessey, the former Democratic mayor of Biloxi, described it as “culturally aligned with the stretch of the country from Pensacola, Florida, to Lafayette, Louisiana” more than the rest of the South. It’s far more Catholic than the rest of the state and economically distinct, relying instead on the trinity of tourism, seafood, and military installations as the basis of its economy.
Another core Republican region is the Pine Belt, which separates the coast from the rest of the state. It’s rural, it’s majority white, and it has long rejected the Democratic Party — Forrest County, which includes Hattiesburg, has not voted for the Democratic presidential nominee since 1944.
In contrast, Northeast Mississippi was once a Democratic stronghold but has followed much of the rest of the state in veering Republican. Nestled in Appalachia and one of the whitest regions of the state, it resembles West Virginia politically as much as it does the Gulf Coast.
Then there are the suburbs: Madison and Rankin counties, which surround Jackson, and DeSoto County, just south of Memphis. While Rankin has remained solidly Republican, both Madison and DeSoto have moved toward Democrats in recent years for varying reasons. Madison County, outside Jackson, is the best-educated jurisdiction in the state, and Joe Biden’s performance there in 2020 was the best by a Democratic presidential nominee since Walter Mondale (he still lost by 12 percent). DeSoto County, in suburban Memphis, has seen a surge in population growth as middle-class African Americans have moved south from Memphis. It is an area that has long been detached from the rest of the state as residents watch Memphis television and consume Tennessee-focused media.
Those factors have added up to recent elections like these: In 2018, Mike Espy, the Democratic candidate in a special election for the US Senate, lost by 7 percent and, in 2020, lost a rematch against incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by 10 percent. In 2019, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Hood lost by only 5 percent. While Democrats view these as moral victories and a sign of hope, Republicans scoff. After all, Democrats lost all of these marquee, top-of-the-ticket races while the GOP picked up wins in local races and built up a supermajority in the state legislature.
A charismatic challenger versus an entrenched incumbent
Despite all that, Democrats are confident this year will be different. They tout Presley as a gifted retail politician, and they aren’t wrong. He is always ready to share an anecdote and his cellphone number with voters.
On a steamy Saturday morning at a farmers market in Hernando, Mississippi, Presley worked the vendors and seemingly had a connection to almost every other person minding a stall. With one man unloading fresh meat out of a truck, he identified the rural country crossroads where the man lived in northeast Mississippi before chatting about local politics and swapping stories with him.
Musgrove described him as one of the best stump speakers he’s seen, though he mournfully added that “we’re in an age where stump speaking doesn’t matter” with the dominance of 30-second television ads in political campaigns.
There’s also the compelling family story. For a national audience, Presley’s famous relative is his second cousin Elvis. For a northeast Mississippi audience, it’s his uncle Harold, a county sheriff killed in the line of duty. And he has a strong record of electoral success, consistently winning elections in northern Mississippi long after political realignment has turned that region red, while also maintaining strong relationships with Black leaders across the state. He touted his record, “holding town hall meetings, listening, delivering on issues,” as the key to his political success in the state.
But Democrats’ optimism this year also stems from their view of Reeves as uniquely vulnerable. Reeves eked out a victory in his initial election against the longtime state attorney general Hood in 2019, but the race was close enough that it required Donald Trump to show up for a rally in Tupelo, the largest city in northeast Mississippi, on Reeves’s behalf.
Since taking office, Reeves has dealt with the consequences of an ongoing scandal involving the misuse of welfare funds. The money, intended to aid low-income families, was diverted in the late 2010s to fund things like a volleyball court at the University of Southern Mississippi after famous alum Brett Favre lobbied then-governor Phil Bryant for it, as well as for a fitness program run by Reeves’s personal trainer. Although Reeves’s ties to scandal are mostly tangential — the money was spent during the administration of his predecessor Phil Bryant while Reeves was lieutenant governor — there have been questions about how much Reeves knew at the time. It has been enough for Democrats to paint the incumbent as corrupt. It doesn’t help that Democrats had already long painted Reeves as a clumsy, out-of-touch politician. Without prompting, he was derided as “tater tot” by multiple farmers market vendors. In an interview with Vox, Presley referred to him as being “born with a silver spoon in his mouth” four times in half an hour.
The central plank of Presley’s campaign is to expand Medicaid in the state. Mississippi is one of 10 states that has not expanded the health care program for workers with low incomes, and Presley has pledged to do so immediately if elected. Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster advising the campaign, noted that the issue “was incredibly important.” In his view, “Medicaid is not a political issue, but it’s very much a nuts-and-bolts pocketbook issue”; McCrary also noted that in the neighboring states of Arkansas and Louisiana, where Medicaid has been expanded, Republicans haven’t taken consequential steps to undo that expansion.
Presley is also pushing to cut the state’s grocery tax — Mississippi is one of a handful of states that impose sales taxes on groceries — and pledged to pass an ethics reform bill if elected. Presley insisted that if he wins it will be “a mandate” from voters to clean up Jackson and that he would call a special session of the state legislature just to focus on that legislation.
While no one would accuse Reeves of being the most likely to charm a farmers market, he is undeniably a canny operator. He’s a dogged fundraiser who is deeply respected in Republican circles for his political acumen, and he’s spent most of his adult life in statewide office: He was elected state treasurer as a political novice at the age of 29, serving two terms, followed by two more as the state’s lieutenant governor before his successful 2019 run for governor.
Yet his ascension to the governor’s mansion wasn’t smooth. Reeves was taken to a runoff in his primary by Bill Waller, a former state Supreme Court chief justice who filed at the last minute and ran as a comparative moderate. In the general election, Reeves faced a close battle with Hood, who won over sufficient support from white voters but failed to adequately juice turnout among Black voters. The last Democratic gubernatorial candidate to do better than Hood was Musgrove when he won in 1999.
Espy told Vox that “the difference between winning by a little and losing by a little really depends on the strength of the Black vote.” He noted that, before entering the race, Presley was “not really known in the Black community.”
Democrats, though, see an opening, simply because of the disdain Black voters have for the incumbent. “There is massive enthusiasm in communities of color because of how bad Tate Reeves is and that is helping Presley create inroads in communities that potentially weren’t there in 2019,” argued one plugged-in Mississippi Democrat.
Presley spoke of Reeves with an undisguised personal contempt. It wasn’t just that he sees the incumbent as the corrupt product of a “country club set.” He also thinks Reeves is just fundamentally out of touch with most Mississippians. “I’m much more relatable to a person at the country store in Ingomar, Mississippi, than Tate Reeves,” Presley insisted. “He’s uncomfortable around common people. He is uncomfortable outside the confines of a country club, or the governor’s mansion, or some fundraiser, and I’m not.”
In contrast, Presley dodged when asked if he would have run against Waller, Reeves’s more moderate opponent in the 2019 primary, if he was the incumbent instead. “I don’t think Bill Waller would have been the type of governor that Tate Reeves has been,” he said. “He’s been concerned with nothing but making his buddies rich and handing out jobs like candy at Christmas time to his friends.”
Reeves is painting Presley as the candidate of “the national liberal machine” while touting his own record, which includes significant improvements in state schools, according to standardized testing — the state’s reading scores have increased along with its high school graduation rates — as well as tax cuts and a concerted effort to keep businesses open during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a socially conservative state, Presley has had to run a campaign that is different from national Democrats. He described himself as “pro-life, all my entire political career.” When asked by Vox if life begins at conception, he said, “I believe so.” He has indicated his broad comfort with the Mississippi law limiting abortion that sparked the 2022 Supreme Court case that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and has consistently emphasized his support for exceptions to allow abortions in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is threatened.
On another hot-button cultural issue — a law just signed by Reeves that would ban gender reassignment surgeries for minors and make it illegal for doctors to prescribe hormones and puberty blockers to them — Presley made clear he was staying out of it. “I’m not going to be leading or a part of any effort to overturn the law as it currently exists in Mississippi,” he said.
That won’t stop Republicans from trying to tie him to the national party. Frank Bordeaux, the state GOP chair, told Vox, “Our opponent has made himself into the national Democrat … That’s obviously a great thing for us.”
Presley, though, needs national money to stay viable. According to the most recent campaign finance report, Reeves’s campaign has more than five times as much money on hand as Presley’s ($9.6 million on hand versus $1.85 million). National Democrats have been willing to overlook Presley’s heresies from liberal doctrine so far. After all, Presley is running in Mississippi, not Massachusetts.
What Mississippi’s chaotic GOP means for 2023
While the Mississippi Republican Party represents a formidable political opponent to Presley, it’s riven with internal feuds and divides.
When the state was a one-party Democratic state for most of the 20th century, Mississippi Democrats were notorious for their factionalism. Their divide was between more populist figures within the party and more conservative ones. That divide has migrated over to state Republicans as they have taken over the state. Often these differences have been more focused on tone and style than policy, but with the rise of the Tea Party and then Trump, they have turned into an active conflict within the GOP.
The conflict is personified by the rise of Chris McDaniel, a controversial state senator from Jones County in the Pine Belt who is currently mounting a primary challenge to the sitting lieutenant governor, Delbert Hosemann. The race is particularly important because Mississippi is a state with perhaps the strongest lieutenant governorship in the country.
Hosemann is a traditional establishment Republican. McDaniel is anything but. A right-wing firebrand, McDaniel gained national attention when he launched a 2014 primary campaign against longtime Sen. Thad Cochran that forced the six-term incumbent into a runoff, and he was one of the few politicians to stump for Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who was accused of making inappropriate sexual advances to teenagers, in 2017. McDaniel lost the 2014 race to Cochran after an organized effort to get Black Democratic voters to cast their ballots for Cochran in the runoff, thanks to Mississippi’s open primaries. McDaniel may face the same challenges this year: While he has a devoted base of support, he’s loathed by Democrats and by many within his own party. The result is that many Democrats, including Musgrove, are likely to take a Republican ballot in the primary. Reeves has long feuded with Hosemann and has implied that he’ll support McDaniel, who he has suggested is the only conservative in the race.
The populist-versus-establishment divide isn’t just about policy, though. It’s often a matter of style. Presley proudly describes himself as a populist. “I am an unabashed populist,” he said. “I have been from the day I entered political office — if the definition of populist is that you side with the people against a system that is set up against the people all day long.” But it’s still a stretch to think that stylistic similarity with an ascendant wing of the GOP will trump his party affiliation with many voters.
Presley has to hope that his ability to blend in at a country store in rural Mississippi overrides the state’s current political inclinations. Reeves’s massive fundraising advantage will enable him to blast his message painting Presley as a national Democrat across all corners of the state. And to finally close the gap that’s kept them shut out of power for decades, Democrats have to hope enough Mississippians will look beyond national politics.
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Mississippi
Arizona State football turns heads with ‘unreal’ uniforms vs Mississippi State
![Arizona State football turns heads with ‘unreal’ uniforms vs Mississippi State Arizona State football turns heads with ‘unreal’ uniforms vs Mississippi State](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/09/07/PPHX/75127214007-asuuniformms.png?auto=webp&crop=450,254,x0,y9&format=pjpg&width=1200)
Sam Leavitt leads ASU to convincing victory in 1st career start
Leavitt and the Sun Devils cruised past visiting Wyoming 48-7 on Saturday night at Mountain America Stadium.
The Arizona State football team elevated its play on the field in its 48-7 win over Wyoming in Week 1.
It is elevating its uniform game for Week 2 against Mississippi State.
ASU football is wearing a gold alternate jersey against the Bulldogs at Mountain America Stadium in Tempe on Saturday night.
The jersey includes maroon “Arizona State” lettering and maroon numbering, along with a noticeable Big 12 logo.
The Sun Devil football team unveiled the uniform last month, with Athletic Director Graham Rossini posting that “you’ll see this on the field early this season.”
On Thursday, ASU football announced that it would be wearing the uniform against Mississippi State with a video that said “Modern shine, with a classic design.”
On Friday, it posted another look at the uniform.
More: Arizona State vs Mississippi State live score updates, analysis for college football game
ASU vs Mississippi State schedule, TV: How to watch college football game
Promising look: Arizona State football’s 2024 win prediction doubles after Week 1 victory over Wyoming
Social media reacted favorably overall to ASU football’s uniform vs Mississippi State:
Do you like the look for ASU football?
ASU vs. Mississippi State picks: Who wins Week 2 college football game?
Looking promising: Arizona State football makes huge leap in college football ranking, Big 12 power rankings
Reach Jeremy Cluff at jeremy.cluff@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter @Jeremy_Cluff.
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Mississippi
Bus company in deadly Mississippi crash has mixed safety record: USDOT
WARREN COUNTY, Miss. (WJTV) – There are questions about a bus company’s track record after a fatal bus crash in Mississippi on Saturday, August 31.
Seven people died when a passenger bus traveling on Interstate 20 left the roadway and overturned. The Mississippi Highway Patrol (MHP) said that 41 passengers and two drivers were enroute to Dallas from Atlanta.
Autobuses Regiomontanos owned the bus in the crash. The company, which is registered with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), has had a troubled record in recent memory. It consists of lawsuits, driver fitness violations and even another fatal crash in 2023.
According to the DOT, the company, based in Laredo, Texas, operates 17 vehicles and employs 39 drivers. The company currently has a ‘conditional‘ safety rating. It is given to companies with ‘inadequate‘ safety controls. Still, companies with this rating may continue to operate.
Its most recent compliance review occurred in July 2023. Using data available from the DOT’s Safety Management System, it has had 155 inspections. Of those inspections, 58 had violations. Nearly all were vehicle maintenance violations.
Three infractions between October and December of 2023 involved issues with vehicle tires. Other infractions included 16 brake or air brake violations and citations for having two buses with no or defective emergency exits.
Seven victims killed in Mississippi bus crash identified
Other inspection violations related to the bus company’s drivers. All violations occurred this year. They include the following:
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(1) Operating a commercial vehicle without corrective lenses or hearing aids as indicated on the driver’s medical certificate (2) Operating a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) while not possessing a valid commercial driver’s license (CDL).
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05/13/2024
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05/14/2024
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05/14/2024
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05/28/2024
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Operate a CMV while not in possession of a CDL on person.
DOT data indicates that company buses have been in four separate accidents over the last two years. A November 2022 crash required a bus to be towed away and another in April 2023 resulted in someone dying. Below is the record.
Date |
Location |
Deaths |
Injuries |
10/16/2023 |
Louisiana |
0 |
1 |
4/15/2023 |
Texas |
1 |
2 |
11/23/2022 |
Tennessee |
0 |
0 |
9/24/2022 |
Arkansas |
0 |
1 |
The NTSB is investigating the crash in conjunction with MHP. NTSB officials said they will look at the carrier’s safety record and protections for bus occupants.
Community comes together to help Mississippi bus crash victims
Autobuses Regiomontanos violated several provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), it failed to have an ADA training program in place for its employees and contractors, failed to file required ADA compliance reports and failed to ensure that all lifts on its buses were properly maintained.
In 2015, the company entered into a settlement agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
The company was also named as a defendant in a $708 million lawsuit filed by New York City City in January. The city accused Autobuses Regiomontanos and other charter bus and transportation companies of taking migrants to the Big Apple on behalf of the State of Texas.
The DOT advises travelers to do the following before they book their next bus trip.
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Search for bus companies
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Verify that a company is authorized to operate
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Review the company’s safety records
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Make sure the company is licensed and insured
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If appropriate, report a company
DOT agencies advise consumers that unless a motor carrier has received an unsatisfactory rating or has been ordered to discontinue its operations, it is authorized to operate on the nation’s roadways. Additionally, readers should not conclude that a carrier is safe or unsafe by only using data from DOT agencies. For more information, click here.
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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WJTV.
Mississippi
As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News
![As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News](https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/PRODUCE015-1024x683.jpg)
This story was originally published by The Tennessee Lookout.
A smorgasbord of bright red tomatoes and vibrant vegetables line the walls of Michael Katrutsa’s produce shop in rural Camden, Tennessee. What began a decade ago as a roadside farm stand is now an air-conditioned outbuilding packed with crates of watermelon, cantaloupe and his locally renowned sweet corn — all picked fresh by a handful of local employees each morning.
The roughly 20-acre farm west of the Tennessee River sells about half of its produce through his shop, with the rest going to the wholesale market.
Farms like Katrutsa’s make up just a sliver of roughly 10.7 million acres of Tennessee farmland largely dominated by hay, soybeans, corn and cotton. Specialized machines help farmers harvest vast quantities of these commodity “row crops,” but Katrutsa said the startup cost was too steep for him. While specialty crops like produce are more labor-intensive, requiring near-constant attention from early July up until the first frost in October, Katrutsa said he takes pride in feeding his neighbors.
The World Wildlife Fund sees farms in the mid-Mississippi delta as ripe with opportunity to become a new mecca for commercial-scale American produce. California currently grows nearly three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of its vegetables.
Explore the latest news about what’s at stake for the climate during this election season.
But as climate change compounds the threats of water scarcity, extreme weather and wildfires on California’s resources, WWF’s Markets Institute is exploring what it would take for farmers in West Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas to embrace — and equitably profit from — specialty crop production like strawberries, lettuce or walnuts.
Specialty crops make up only 0.19% of the region’s farm acreage, but their higher sale value allows them to generate 1.08% of the region’s agriculture revenue, according to WWF’s May report, called The Next California, spearheaded by Markets Institute Senior Director Julia Kurnik. She argues that there’s an opportunity to proactively create more inclusive, higher-yield business models on existing farms, preventing natural ecosystems from being unnecessarily transformed into farmland.
But shifting produce growth to the Mid-Delta comes with hurdles: it requires buyers willing to try new markets, understanding of new crops’ diseases and needs, specialized equipment like cold storage and lots of expensive hands-on labor.
“It is not as simple as a farmer simply putting new crops in the ground,” Kurnik said.
Early Adopters Put Idea to the Test
Sixth-generation Arkansas farmer Hallie Shoffner is putting WWF’s models to the test through a nonprofit called the Delta Harvest Food Hub. The hub works with Black and women farmers to pilot the scalability of growing specialty crops in the Delta region, starting with specialty rice.
Shoffner grows basmati, jasmine, sushi rice, sake rice seeds and more on her 2,000-acre, century-old farm located in an unincorporated town outside Newport, Arkansas. She’s skeptical about a full switch to produce, but sees specialty rice products as “low-hanging fruit” easily adopted in the mid-Delta, where commodity rice is already widely grown.
The United States is the fifth-largest rice exporter in the world, and Arkansas is the country’s top producer, with other Mississippi River valley states not far behind. But the majority of specialty rice is grown in California or imported from East Asian countries.
“We are forward-thinking farmers who want to change, who want to do something different,” Shoffner said. “We want to make more money, because we know we cannot make as much money as small farms in the current agricultural economy.”
The commodity farming that dominates Delta agriculture makes the economic success of farmers largely dependent on the market prices of rice, corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops, Shoffner said. This incentivizes farms to grow larger to ensure they turn a profit even when prices are low, like they are now. But smaller farms struggle to stay afloat.
Shoffner said her vision for developing specialty crop markets in Arkansas will be through more collaboration between many smaller farms to diversify crop production and produce for large contracts together. She’s also exploring possibilities for expanding chickpea, sunflower, sesame and pea production in Arkansas.
And while she’s at it, Shoffner is working to make agriculture more equitable.
“As a white farmer who is a sixth generation farmer, I realize that I have inherited a large amount of land that systematically disenfranchised Black farmers,” Shoffner said. “And it is my responsibility to acknowledge that, and leverage what I’ve been given to help others.”
Her project, Delta Harvest, has a contract to grow specialty rice with a large company and she’s working with several Black farmers. She was too small to do it by herself, so they are doing it cooperatively.
Finding the Right Markets
In Mississippi, efforts to shift some of California’s sprawling specialty crop industry to the Mid-Delta drew skepticism from some farmers—even those with established specialty crop operations.
For the past 20 years, Don van de Werken has co-owned a 120-acre blueberry and tea farm in Poplarville, Mississippi, distributing much of its crops to buyers in his county and nearby cities.
Van de Werken questioned whether there would be enough regional demand to sustain a scaled-up specialty crop industry in Mississippi, noting that the success of his own enterprise hinges on targeting hyper-local markets like New Orleans. Shipping vegetables, fruits and other produce to buyers outside the Delta region would quickly become cost prohibitive for local farmers, van de Werken said.
“The problem we have, not just in Mississippi but the mid South in general, is we just don’t have the population base,” said van de Werken, who is also president of the Gulf South Blueberry Growers Association. “We don’t want our blueberries to go to Maine or Seattle. We want to focus our produce in a regional market.”
To make growing specialty crops worthwhile, Mississippi farmers would need to identify nearby buyers willing to purchase the new products on a consistent basis, van de Werken said. While selling goods directly to retail grocery chains like Kroger is often difficult, farmers could reduce financial risks by signing purchasing agreements with regional brokers like Louisiana-based Capitol City Produce.
“Anybody that puts anything in the ground is already taking a risk, but you want to minimize that risk,” he explained. “If you can prove to the brokers and the buyers that they can make money doing this, then the farming will come.”
The WWF report investigates ways to distribute risk across the supply chain to make selling to new markets easier on farmers, and works to connect buyers with Mid-Delta farmers.
AgLaunch, a Memphis-based nonprofit that guides farmers in innovation, estimates that adding specialty crops to the Mid-Delta region could spur $4.6 billion in added revenue and 33,000 jobs. But while commodity crop prices are readily available on the Chicago Board of Trade, the specialty crop market is generally not so transparent. Large, vertically integrated companies usually dictate contract terms, AgLaunch President and farmer Pete Nelson said.
AgLaunch helps build “smart contracts” that allow multiple farmers to produce on a contract, helping them secure higher quantity deals with proper compensation as a collective.
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Purdue College of Agriculture professor Fred Whitford said the idea of farming cooperatives that help smaller farmers carve out space in a large-quantity market is more than 100 years old. Whitford compared commodity producers to retail giants like Walmart, which make money by selling in bulk. Small producers are more like Ace Hardware, he said.
“Maybe the smaller folks have an ability to make more off their land by going to a specialty crop,” he said.
New Challenges Need New Solutions
Farmers who embrace specialty crops will face hurdles before they make it to the market.
Growing produce can be more profitable but “easier said than done,” Whitford said. “It’s nice on paper … but boy, in reality, you’re going to have to keep an eye on this crop, whatever you’re growing, because one slip up … then you have lost a lot of money.”
In Tennessee, Katrutsa grew strawberries in addition to his other crops for 10 years, but last April, a hail storm pulverized his entire field, leaving him with nothing. He’s not growing strawberries this year, and he might not plant them again — he’s not sure if he can find enough labor to make it work.
He grows many types of produce so if one fails, it’s less catastrophic. He sources seedlings from a neighboring state (it’s cheaper than growing from seed) and plants five times each season to maximize yield.
He works with a consultant to help identify diseases and how to treat them. Tomatoes are the most challenging, Katrutsa said. Some of his tomato plants withered this year due to bacterial wilt that flourishes in wet soil and high temperatures and has few effective chemical remedies.
Carolyn Preble helps out farmer Michael Katrutsa at the farm shop, which stocks the more than 20 acres of produce Katrutsa grows in rural Camden, Tennessee. Credit: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
Chemical treatments pose other challenges. In Shaw, Mississippi, Michael Muzzi relies on a range of herbicides to grow soybeans and other feed grains on his 2,000-acre farm. Once sprayed, herbicides like Liberty and Dicamba remain in the ground and can drift in the air, which is hazardous to specialty crops, like tomatoes, that aren’t resistant.
“You’re not going to be able to spray [those herbicides] on specialty crops,” Muzzi said. “You’d have to have something that’s chemically tolerant.”
Growing fruits and vegetables on a farm with previous heavy herbicide use would require insulating those crops from chemical runoff — a feat that could only be reliably achieved by leaving whole acres of land unused for years, he said.
AgLaunch is exploring innovative ways to address these problems. For some farmers, this means helping make their existing row crops more efficient using farmer-incubated technology, adding local value by growing specialty crops or taking on processing, Nelson said.
Then there’s disruption with higher risk: farmers can partner with agriculture automation technology startups, allowing them to field test their products and collect data in exchange for farmer equity in the startup companies. If the startup succeeds, the farmer shares in the benefits.
“It’s not as simple as, ‘Hey, we should grow tomatoes,’” Nelson said. “It’s how you think about the whole value chain and make sure the farmer is protected. Make sure it’s not an opportunity just to grow a crop, but it’s an opportunity to own part of the processing or to build new products.”
Kurnik said WWF isn’t trying to recruit farmers to start growing specialty crops – they just want Mid-Delta farmers to have the information they need to make informed decisions. In terms of acreage, row crops “dwarf” specialty crops in the United States. A small percentage shift would mean a significant change in the level of specialty crops in the Delta.
“We don’t need everyone to want to jump on board tomorrow,” she said. “They would flood the market if they did.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. Disclosure: The Next California report was also funded by Walton.
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