Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farm Cooperative (FFC) antipoverty programs have been highly leveraged on bank loans serviced using predominately donations. Unfortunately, Hamer like many sharecroppers lacked the financial literacy to understand how to build a viable FFC anti-poverty program at the speed of cash. Nor did she understand how to successfully manage a farm cooperative and the other anti-poverty programs that would produce enough revenue to pay back the loans used to pay for them. The original plan called for raising cotton as its principal cash crop; that had been unwise because a labor-intensive handpicked cash crop could not compete with mechanized large commercial farmed cotton production. In addition, those who benefitted from FFC food crops and other services did not contribute the labor needed raise cotton. Larger farms had machines to do most of the labor machines purchased in part with government subsidies something that FFC did not receive.
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