White South African farmers are thriving in Mississippi

They are also becoming entangled in an old southern story

Workers harvest rice at a farm in Pace, Mississippi, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. The USDA has slightly increased the production for rice. Rice is pegged at 190.546 million hundredweight, a 47,000 above a month ago. Photographer: Rory Doyle/Bloomberg via Getty Images — Image: Getty Images

Mar 23rd 2023|NEW YORK

White south africans started working on farms in Mississippi more than two decades ago, if Andrew Johnson (pictured) remembers correctly. At Pitts Farm, where the sexagenarian farm worker was formerly employed, records show that clipped accents became a mainstay in 2014. The South Africans were good guys, hard-working and kept to themselves. The fact that they were getting paid 60% more wasn’t their fault, Mr Johnson says. “They didn’t know what we was getting, we didn’t know what they was getting.”

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Delta veld”