A Mississippi Today investigation found at least five Delta farms paid their primarily Black local workforce less money per hour than temporary workers from other countries – most often, white men from South Africa.

INDIANOLA – The new crop of workers arrived with clipped accents and small khaki shorts.

Richard Strong remembers the young men – farmers back home – had never seen a massive 28,000-pound tractor until traveling some 8,000 miles to Mississippi.

As kids, Richard and his brother, Gregory, earned calloused palms chopping cotton in the swelter of southern summers. As adults, they spent 24 years filling acres with cotton, soybeans and corn on Pitts Farms – just like their daddy had.

“Farming is actually in our DNA,” said Richard Strong, now 51. “I could close my eyes and drive a tractor.”

But the brothers haven’t been on a tractor or in the fields in over two years. They say they unknowingly trained themselves out of jobs when the Pitts family hired South Africans through a visa program.

The Pitts paid their foreign workforce nearly $12 an hour while their local workers – usually Black men – made just $7.25 to $9.50 per hour, according to a Department of Labor audit that spanned 2020 and 2021. The audit also found four local workers lost out on shifts when the temporary workers arrived.

But the Strongs and other Black workers say the pay gap...

Read Full Story: https://mississippitoday.org/2022/06/29/delta-farm-underpay-black-farmers/