Walter West, Jr., harvests cotton at his farm in rural Hazelhurst, Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Ordinarily, West's cotton crops would look like a sea of white, but this season's crops have been severely impacted by drought conditions. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
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.
