The future of the Delta's dirt
As I prep for a river dinner, some contemplations on a more just future
A reminder: The Great River is now available wherever you get your books, as the saying goes. And I’m now on tour—which will include a ticketed dinner in New Orleans next Friday, June 21, where I’ll do my best to tell the story of the river through food.
For this week’s newsletter, I wanted to discuss a bit one of the ideas we’ll talk (and eat) about next week: a more just and vibrant future for the Mississippi’s floodplain
Late in the nineteenth century, a Black man named “Papa” Joe Williams sharecropped 86 acres in northeastern Arkansas, amid the farming empire that was then being cleared atop the Mississippi River’s former floodplain. First he, and then his son, UD Williams, saved up the money earned on those acres—supplemented by selling a bit of moonshine—until, by 1949, the Williams purchased the land.
This was a striking achievement, given the era. In the early twentieth century, Black farmers controlled much of the riverside farmland. By mid-century, much was gone. Indeed, according to analysis in The Atlantic, over the next fifteen years, Black farmers across the river in Mississippi lost 800,000 acres of land—worth, when you facto in the lost income, too, as much as $6 billion. The reason was, as I write in The Great River, “nothing short of extortion”: fraudulently high interest rates and tax rates; exorbitant collateral on loans. Crippled financially, many owners had no choice but to sell to their white neighbors.
I’ve been thinking about this history lately, because one of the questions everyone seems to ask when I discuss the book is what will come in the the future for this river. What can we do? Unfortunately, when it comes to the river’s main channel, there are no easy answers—it’s hard to unbuild what we’ve built along the river. That’s a story for another newsletter, though.
I feel clearer about the future of the “the Delta”—by which I mean the former floodplain in the alluvial valley, in Mississippi and Arkansas (and a bit of northern Louisiana). It’s a giant swath of farmland now, but it’s precarious. This land is, as I write, “not really land but a severed piece of river: a low expanse built by its flow, by its floods.” One thing we need to do is give some of that relict river back, restoring the lost wetlands. What we don’t give back, though, we should use better. Rather than growing soybeans and corn, most of it destined for foreign ports of industrial processing facilities, let’s grow actual vegetables here.
This, as I note in the book, may be better for the farmers themselves, or at least small scale farmers like the Williams family: rather than depending on government subsidies that supply narrow margins, vegetables can provide real profits. That, I presume, is part of why the Williams family switched from row crops to sweet potatoes—and then, eventually, seeking to add even more value, launched Delta Dirt Distillery, in Helena, Arkansas. Now they turn those potatoes into craft spirits—gin and bourbon and vodka.
The business was highlighted in a recent report from the World Wildlife Fund, which is seeking to expand vegetable production in the Delta, mostly to prevent land-clearing in the northern Great Plains as California becomes a less viable place for speciality crops. There are, in other words, active efforts underway to build up the infrastructure needed so that more such farms can thrive.
This should be exciting to anyone who cares about the Delta—and about the river. There are so many ripple effects. Many speciality crops can’t be carried on barges on the river, since they’re less shelf-stable than corn or soybeans. They can’t just sit on a barge, baking in the sun. So more vegetables = fewer barges = a river that is more accessible to everyone else, human and nonhuman.
The other ripple effect is justice: for more than a century, farming has become increasingly a game of rich men, who own ever-larger parcels of land. Specialty farms can succeed on smaller acreage, allowing a more diverse range of farmers to thrive. I’ve talked to white farmers who have made the switch to vegetables, including one I briefly profile in the book. But, given the injustices of land theft in the Delta, it’s particularly heartening to see a business like Delta Dirt. (That’s why, when I was looking for a venue for my book event in Helena, I chose the distillery. I’ll be there at 5pm on June 28! Come talk and sip!)
And while we won’t be featuring Delta Dirt’s sweet potatoes at the Mississippi River dinner, we will be featuring produce from Black farmers closer to New Orleans. Black farmers have, in general, been farm more committed than their white, wealthy peers to models of farming that serve local communities—that produce actual food that can actually be consumed locally, that embrace cooperative models that allow more, smaller-scale farmers to thrive. See for example, Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Coop and, more recently, Calvin Head’s Milestone Cooperative Farm. That model, I hope, is one that will grow in the future, too, and one I want to highlight on the table.
🦪 🫔 🍽
The Mississippi River dinner will also highlight the Indigenous history of the river, and how the delta in particular, thanks to its abundant wild food, seemed to have been a place of spiritual importance. We’ll talk about the strange lack of local food produced in the floodplain, and the food culture it produced. And it’ll all be delicious, because Chef Marcus Jacobs of Porgy’s Seafood knows what he’s doing. You can pick up tickets here.
See also: This week, Civil Eats released a Q&A with key leaders of the Heirlooms Garden Oral History Project, which collects the stories of Black and Indigenous farmers.
🛶 BTW, we’ve nearly filled the first canoe for The Great River expedition with John Ruskey’s Quapaw Canoe Company, but a few seats remain. A slight change of plans: we’ll be heading into what John calls the “Big Muddy Wilderness,” the wildest-feeling stretch in the Delta. Reply to this email if you’re interested in joining, and I’ll connect you with John, the real brains behind this adventure.
🐺 The world’s first wilderness
A century ago this month, the federal government created the first official “wilderness” in New Mexico. In this thought-provoking piece in High Country News, Marissa Ortega-Welch notes that, in early drafts of the enabling legislation, wilderness was described as a place where “man himself is a member of the natural community.
“Today, the concept of wilderness is criticized for reinforcing a false separation between humans and nature,” Ortega-Welch writes. “How might we see wilderness areas differently if that single phrase had survived?” (She’s got a podcast coming out soon, too, about the idea of wilderness, that is sure to be a must-listen.)
Southern roundup
The mystery of the cut-down New Orleans live oak (Nola.com)
Shark attacks in the Florida panhandle (CNN)
Land rights and carbon storage in Louisiana (Nola.com)
How tax breaks are boosting Texas beekeeping (Texas Monthly)
Cleaning D.C.’s ‘forgotten’ river (AP)
A guide to a tiny but wild Tennessee state park (Garden & Gun)
A new Disney version of Louisiana swamps (Axios)
Southern nature jobs
National Wild Turkey Federation: Wildlife biologist/forester
📖 The Great River roundup
🎙 Interviews
KPCW’s This Green Earth
🖋 Reviews
“The Back Forty” (Food & Environment Reporting Network)