Source: David Boraks, WFAE, 6/13/22


Earl Pugh's house looks out over some of the machinery, sheds and fields of Middle Creek Farms, where the retired farmer's son now manages the cultivation of crops from the family's productive soil. A stone's throw from the house, Pugh, also a three-term Hyde County commissioner, pointed to a rising threat to farming in a coastal region where the soil is so rich and dark it's called the Blacklands. Salt was taking a bite out of a field of cotton seedlings.

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