corn – Building a better South

August 13, 2014

Country church, Clarendon County, S.C.

Field of ripe grain, Clarendon County, S.C.

Ripe grain spreads out in front of this rural Clarendon County church, reminding us that we need both bread and faith to survive, writes photographer Linda W. Brown of nearby Kingstree, S.C.

Clarendon County has 34,357 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 population estimate. About half of the county’s residence are white; the other half are black. Some other statistics:

High school graduation rate of those 25 or older: 76.3 percent.
Bachelor’s degree graduates: 13.8 percent
Median household income: $33,267
Poverty rate: 22.8 percent

More QuickFacts from the U.S. Census.

July 22, 2014July 22, 2014

Dry field, Williamsburg County, S.C.

Dry weather has had an effect on this field of corn in rural Williamsburg County. Farmers are all too often at the mercy of the weather when it comes to the success or failure of their crops, observes retired editor and photographer Linda W. Brown of Kingstreet, S.C.

More about Williamsburg County.

May 24, 2013July 13, 2013

Watering the corn near Leslie, Ga.

Photo by Michael Kaynard. All rights reserved.

Driving across the South these days in the early morning or at dusk, it’s fairly typical to see a lot of cornfields being watered by huge irrigation sprinklers, as shown here in a field outside Leslie in the heart of central Georgia.

Water — or the increasing lack of it — has been in the news lately with a recent story in The New York Times about a huge multi-state aquifer in the heartland that’s drying up in Kansas and Texas. These kind of water woes could forecast the future in the South.

In recent years, there’s been a three-state water war pitting the metro Atlanta area of Georgia with downstream users in southwest Georgia, eastern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Learn more here through the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Learn more about Georgia’s corn crop from this previous post.

May 22, 2013July 13, 2013

Young corn near Leslie, Ga.

Photo by Andy Brack. All rights reserved.

Here grows a field of young corn in the heart of Georgia near the small town of Leslie in Sumter County. Based on 2008 numbers, Southern farmers this year are expected to grow more than 5 million acres of corn, including more than 310,000 acres in Georgia. [Learn more about Georgia’s corn crop.]

But that amount for the 11-state region pales in comparison to the corn grown in just one state — more than 12 million acres in 2008 in Iowa, and about the same amount in Illinois. [More.] This year, farmers across the country have planted more corn than anytime since 1936 — some 97 million acres — to take advantage of high prices due to last year’s drought, according to USA Today.