Organization Highlight: Southern Rural Development Center
Introduction to the Organization and Work
The Southern Rural Development Center (SRDC) is one of the nation’s four Regional Rural Development Centers authorized under the authority of the Rural Development Act of 1972. It is housed at Mississippi State University and serves the thirty Land-Grant Institutions across thirteen states and two territories in the region. The SRDC also engages with other partners on issues of national interest. Its focus is on building the capacity of Land-Grants and their partners to advance the needs of communities to improve quality of life. Among other substantive issues and topics, the SRDC is involved in research, outreach, and educational efforts related to family land, tangled titles, and fractionated interests, including heirs’ property. This work entails both research and Cooperative Extension System-based outreach and educational activities.
Overview of Heirs’ Property Initiatives, Work, and Focus
The SRDC has partnered with several researchers and their organizations, including colleges/universities and nonprofit organizations, to help coordinate and conduct research to inform heirs’ property work. Projects with numerous entities have included efforts to: (1) better estimate heirs’ property prevalence; (2) assess the relationship between heirs’ property and other demographic, social, and economic household and community characteristics; (3) document and map the social networks between organizations doing heirs’ property related work; and (4) understand the ethical challenges faced when working on these issues through several different roles. Furthermore, efforts have been made to help publish and disseminate information from these initiatives, including workshops, research briefs, journal articles, and special issues of a journal (https://open.clemson.edu/jrss/vol38/iss1/).
The SRDC has also been involved in convening educators and developing, disseminating, and evaluating train-the-trainer curricula. Working with the National Policy Research Center at Alcorn State University and the Southern Risk Management Education Center, and with the involvement of numerous faculty and leaders at colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations, SRDC helped coordinate the creation and implementation of the peer-reviewed Understanding Heirs’ Property at the Community Level training (https://srdc.msstate.edu/programs/heir_property).
The train-the-trainer curriculum provides an overview of heirs’ property and associated challenges and then explores prevention and mitigation strategies and their implications. Additional advanced trainings on topics such as Land Use and the 2018 Farm Bill, Land Valuation for Heirs’ Property, and the Heirs’ Property Volunteer Navigator Initiative have been added for people who complete the fundamentals training and who have spent six months offering educational opportunities in their own states. To date (December 2025), 287 people have gone through the fundamentals train-the-trainer program, and they have offered training to people in their home states. Additional curricula are in development, including identifying and managing ethical issues of concern for those professionals working in the realms of research, outreach and education, and legal services.
Opportunities for Collaboration and Support:
The SRDC assists with organizational coordination to advance collaborative work on heirs’ property through the multistate Southern Extension and Research Activity (SERA 49) project entitled, Heirs’ Property: Impacts at Family, Community, and Regional Levels (https://nimss.org/projects/view/mrp/outline/19014). This multi-organizational network maintains a listserv, holds monthly virtual meetings, hosts an annual convening, and has working groups on topics including research, outreach and education, and policy and law. People wanting to engage with the SRDC and/or SERA 49 can contact the SRDC Associate Director, Roseanne Scammahorn (https://srdc.msstate.edu/about-us/about-us), for more information on collaborative and supportive opportunities.
Acknowledgements and Disclaimers:
The SRDC receives support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Additional support for SRDC’s work on issues of heirs’ property has come through partnership with the National Policy Center at Alcorn State University, Southern Extension Risk Management, and JPMorganChase. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and should not be construed to represent any official USDA, U.S. Government, host institution, or other partners’ determination or policy.
Photos provided by Southern Rural Development Center
