Too In the rural South, automation in agriculture has had a similarly devastating effect. Five million farm jobs have disappeared in the region in the past four decades. Now, only 7.6 percent of the rural work force is employed in farming. And there aren't many other options. In Shelby, Miss., a tiny community in the heart of the Delta, each dirt road reveals another collection of trailer homes and shanties.
Children play in the streets, seemingly oblivious to the bad times.
Now, residents of Shelby need a car and enough gas money to get out of town in order to find work. The economy around here is poor. There's nothing here. Johnson shares a crumbling wooden shack with five relatives just across a dusty road from two enormous cotton processing plants. I've been here all my life, and there still ain't no jobs.