A new study shows that the contrast of heavy farm subsidies and relatively few rural-development grants to poor counties is a national pattern, not just in the Delta of northwest Mississippi, where The Washington Post reported a story this week. The pattern has been established by the Southern Rural Development Initiative, a nonprofit that says it "provides practical tools for rural community leaders, organizations, and related national sectors to create just and economically sustainable communities across the rural South."
In 2001-03, "For every rural development grant dollar sent to the 364 poorest rural counties in America, $15.65 went in agricultural commodity direct payment subsidies – most of it to a small number of very large farm operations," the study report says. "Over this three-year period, these 364 poor rural counties received $5 billion through nutrition programs, primarily to children and their families. This is a per capita allocation of $730, compared to the national nutrition program per capita allocation of $305 and $366 for nonmetro counties. This reflects the extreme poverty conditions found in these counties."
The reports says the Department of Agriculture "perpetuates the legacy of the Deep South’s anachronistic, inequitable economy through its agricultural subsidy programs. The commodity crops grown in this region that account for the bulk of the subsidy payments (rice, cotton, and sugar) are crops that anchored the old plantation system. Sharecropping and Jim Crow are gone, but those communities and states that have not invested in building broad-based community assets through education, civic capacity, and basic economic infrastructure remain dependent on an anachronistic economy via supports from the federal government."
The release of the study and the Post story were more than coincidental. SRDI Policy and Research Director Jason Gray told The Rural Blog that he told one of the Post reporters that the study was in the works.
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