Hard Times in the Delta as Farmers Consider Letting Crops Rot

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/business/mississippi-delta-farmers-rice-prices.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HFA.c8ES.hyZEgAv3PGAX&smid=url-share

Prices for nearly every major U.S. crop are below what it costs to grow them. But a drop in rice prices means another blow to farmers in Mississippi’s agricultural belt.

Jack Westerfield stood ankle deep atop 30 feet of unhusked rice, his gray T-shirt and jeans dusty with starchy powder. He sounded distressed.

“What am I supposed to do with 2.2 million pounds of rice?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard over the noisy industrial fans drying the rice on his farm in Merigold, Miss. “I’m serious. What am I supposed to do?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Mr. Westerfield had even considered whether he should dump the grains onto a field to rot.

Across the country, farmers are struggling. Prices for nearly every major crop are below what it costs to grow them. Much attention has been paid to Midwestern soybean growers, whose crop was at the heart of the trade war between the United States and China. But farmers in Mississippi are perhaps worse off than farmers in the rest of the country. Rice is one of their biggest crops, and almost no one is buying.

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But nobody thinks the bailout money will fundamentally change the hole farmers are in. Receiving $132 per acre of rice — the price the government has set for rice — matters little when you paid $1,000 per acre to grow it.

[travelingthrulife]

1. Welp. Do you think Mr Farmer that you might connect that outcome with your

vote for President in 2024?

[Norrrm]

2. Were you selling your rice during the Biden administration?

[hatrack]

3. Boo-hoo . . .

Anyway.

[ColoringFool]

4. You're SUPPOSED TO FO, Since You've Aready FA!

[Johonny]

5. Womp womp

[Volaris]

6. He should have all 2 million pounds delivered to the WHITE HOUSE.

'I can't sell it...YOU figure out what to do with it.'

[democratsruletheday]

7. A farmer from Miss. might be the LAST guy on earth I give a shit about

Not much doubt he voted for the orange POS not once or twice but THREE times and now he's crying about the consequences? Eff off buddy, you reap what you sow, literally and figuratively. Tots and pears...

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

8. Well he might let them buy land for an Emmett Till interpretive Center

One of Mr. Westerfield’s farms is adjacent to a dilapidated wooden barn indistinguishable from the thousands of others dotting the area. But this is the barn where 14-year-old Emmet Till was lynched in 1955. Mr. Westerfield is in discussions with the Emmett Till Interpretive Center to sell some land to make access to the site easier.