Dorothy Grady pulled at a tuft of green fronds sprouting from one of an array of soil-filled buckets sitting in the driveway of her house. A plump carrot, five inches long and brilliant orange, popped out. Nearby, a sage shrub grew from another bucket, and scallions crowded a squat grow bag. In about three weeks, Grady would kick off the spring growing season on the land she cultivates around Shelby, Mississippi, including two plots at the now-closed middle school across the street, a small grove of peach and pear trees up the road, and five acres outside of town. She was ready to start planting eggplants, melons, tomatoes and a cornucopia of other produce that would soon end up in the homes of 127 nearby residents.  Dorothy Grady is one of almost a dozen local growers supplying produce to Delta GREENS. Credit: Elizabeth Hewitt Shelby, a few miles east of the Mississippi River, is surrounded by flat, fertile farmland. But Grady’s vegetables and fruit are some of the only crops around that make it to local plates. The vast majority of Mississippi Delta farms are devoted to commodity crops like soy and corn. Grady is one of almost a dozen local growers supplying produce to Delta GREENS, a collaborative research project that is delivering fresh ingredients to residents of Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties with diabetes and monitoring the health impacts. This “food is medicine” project is one of a number of initiatives that are supporting farmers and expanding the market for locally grown produce in this western Mississippi region. The benefits run in both directions: At the same time that community members are getting access to these nutritious ingredients, the small-scale farmers who grow them are getting a leg up. “What we’re trying to do is build cooperative development amongst the farms,” says Julian Miller, founding director for the Reuben V. Anderson Institute for Social Justice in Jackson, a co-principal investigator for Delta GREENS, and a long-time local food advocate in the Delta region. “Ultimately, we want to be able to give them the capacity to scale and capture the broader market.” The 200-mile-long Delta region, on the fertile floodplain sandwiched between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, has a rich agricultural history. Once known for growing cotton, today the area is dominated by ridged fields growing commodities that will be processed into animal feed or ethanol. In the past, many Delta residents cultivated fruits and vegetables, says Miller, yet over time, pressures like farming mechanization and loss of land eroded the practice. Miller, a fifth-generation Delta resident who grew up a few miles away from Shelby, never saw anyone with a vegetable garden. “That tradition was lost, as far as growing your food,” he says.  Today, despite the abundance of fertile land, very little of it is dedicated to edible crops. About 90 percent of the food people eat in this region is grown elsewhere and imported. “That’s the irony,” Miller says.

The Mississippi River Basin begins in a little lake in northern Minnesota. But its many branches and tributaries sprawl across nearly half of the continental U.S., stretching from the sandstone cliffs of Montana to the shale fields of Western Pennsylvania, sustaining the lives and livelihoods of millions in between. Yet even this doesn’t fully capture how large the Mississippi looms. According to the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, the region it spans produces more than 90 percent of America’s agricultural exports and a majority of its livestock. It’s also one of the most important transportation corridors on the planet, supporting a $400 billion shipping industry that ferries countless goods across the continent, from fertilizer to car parts. So many people rely on the Mississippi River Basin for their water supply that an exact count doesn’t even exist.  All of this usage sits in uneasy parallel with a vast and vital natural world: The rivers and their floodplains are home to over half of the continent’s migratory bird routes and one out of every four of its fish species. The Mississippi River Basin nurtures all of this wildlife despite being beset by a steady stream of industrial pollution, sewage discharge and agricultural runoff.  The fact that one of America’s most iconic natural features is also one of its most threatened makes it an ideal case study. Age-old questions of commerce versus conservation are integral to the Mississippi’s identity. So is the diversity of people and places the river touches, from Rust Belt cities to soybean farms. Its grandeur and its disrepair make it an irresistible metaphor.  This 12-story project, a special subset of our ongoing Waterline series, will explore the many challenges and the collaborative, forward-thinking solutions transforming the Mississippi River Basin today. We’ll examine efforts to eradicate invasive species, convert grazing land into wildlife habitat, and make the region’s farms more welcoming to migratory birds. We’ll hear from the people whose cities, economies and identities are inseparable from the river basin. And we’ll immerse ourselves in the region through vibrant imagery, interactive storytelling and a Mississippi River music playlist curated by RTBC founder David Byrne. To follow along, subscribe to our newsletter. This series is sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation. To learn more about our funder-supported content, read our Editorial Independence Policy. The post 12 Stories About America’s Most Iconic River System appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

For the next six months, Reasons to be Cheerful is exploring the Mississippi River Basin, home to some of the most pressing challenges in the United States. A symbol of America, the Mississippi River Basin connects a vast region of farms, cities, dams and natural habitats that support a range of biodiversity across hundreds of thousands of square miles. It is one of America’s greatest resources, providing energy generation, agricultural sustenance and transportation. These aspects make the river and the region a fascinating lens through which to view the country’s ecological, economic and cultural challenges — and their solutions. I made this playlist for the series with songs about the Mississippi — not the state, though that too, but more the giant river and its watershed. The post My Mississippi River Playlist appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

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This Friday, million so of patriotic families across the US will be celebrating Independence Day by reflecting on the many benefits they have because they live in this nation. Meanwhile, instead of flying the Stars and Stripes, too many Americans seem more interested in burning the American flag … or flying one representing another nation. There’s been a palpable dip in the level of national pride in recent years, and a new Gallup poll indicates that the Democratic Party has disproportionately fueled the shift. The Daily Caller broke down some of the survey’s most notable results: Fewer Democrats are “extremely” or “very” proud to be American than at any point in the last 25 years, a new poll shows. Just 36% of Democrats said they are beyond “moderately proud” of their country, down from 62% in 2024, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. The survey found that overall American pride is at a record low of 58%, but Democrats are “mostly” responsible for the decline. Democrats’ current level of national pride is at its lowest since 2020, when it was 42%, according to Gallup. It jumped to 62% once former President Joe Biden took office the following year, and it stayed above 50% throughout his term. The last time the percentage reached above 80% for Democrats was under former President Barack Obama. An array of social media posts brought light to the poll results: New Gallup poll shows just 36% of Democrats say they’re very proud to be American vs 92% of Republicans. Democrats hate America. pic.twitter.com/I0ShljRiw4 — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 30, 2025 Democrats hate America. pic.twitter.com/i6wk4tR6ou — Gunther Eagleman (@GuntherEagleman) July 1, 2025 The low level of pride in America among Democrats might be startling, but it also makes sense in the context of the seemingly anti-American rhetoric and behavior that has become so common in the party recently: “Democrats exposed themselves as the party of insanity and hate—THE PARTY THAT WANTS TO PUT AMERICA LAST.” –@PressSec pic.twitter.com/siUvXFBT3p — The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2025 54% of young Democrats are embarrassed to be an American and Bill Maher rightfully tears apart the bullshit on the left. “You couldn’t survive a week living in intifadaville” @RubinReport pic.twitter.com/iEp43GabQd — The Rubin Report (@RubinReportShow) May 12, 2025 Gallup also highlighted the differences between age groups when it comes to expressing pride in being American: There are clear generational differences in American pride, with each new generation significantly less likely than the previous one to say they are extremely or very proud to be an American. This finding is based on the average level of pride expressed by the various generational groups across five 5-year periods since 2001. The resulting sample sizes allow for robust comparisons at each time period between groups as well as evaluation of changes over time. The youngest two generations, millennials (born between 1980 and 1996) and Generation Z (born after 1996), are the most distinct. From 2021 to 2025, less than half (41%) of adults who belong to Generation Z have been extremely or very proud to be Americans, compared with 58% of millennials. The rate increases to 71% of Generation X, 75% of the baby boom generation and 83% of the Silent Generation. Despite their greater expression of pride, all generations from millennials through the Silent Generation have shown declines of 10 or more points in the percentages extremely or very proud since 2001-2005. Most of that change has occurred since 2016. This year’s poll was just the latest to confirm the downward trend in national pride, as evidence by this report from The Hill a few years ago: