The Great Southern Agricultural Transformation and Its Social Consequences

Abstract

The great agricultural transformation within the South began early in this century, but between 1950 and 1980 reached its greatest intensity. This transformation dislocated many lives, most particularly blacks. Whereas there was a precipitous decline in both the white and black farm population during the transformation, whites were able to enter the southern rural nonfarm population more easily than the blacks. Blacks mainly left for large cities, mostly in the North. Today southern agriculture is practiced on a far larger scale than in the past, and much of it has become highly mechanized. In areas of the region's agriculture that have experienced little mechanization, Hispanics—many undocumented and thus vulnerable to exploitation—now meet much of the labor demand. Contract labor is replacing hired because farmers find it cheaper. Despite the modernization of much of the region's agriculture, there has been little change in its geographical distribution. As in the past, many southern counties continue to depend heavily on the sale of one agricultural commodity. Today, however, it is more frequently broiler chickens than cotton or tobacco.