The verse Proverbs supplies against reading poverty as a verdict on the poor.
Quick answer
The poor are not short of capacity. Their ground could feed people, and what destroys the harvest is named plainly: injustice.
Read both lines
The NKJV footnotes "fallow ground" as uncultivated and "waste" as literally what is swept away, and both sharpen the picture. There is much food in that ground, meaning the potential is real and the land is good; the problem is that it is not being worked, and the second line says why. The absence is not diligence but justice. Something is being swept away, and a system rather than a character flaw is doing the sweeping. This is Proverbs itself refusing the easy inference, and it belongs beside the verses about the sluggard rather than in tension with them, because the book is perfectly capable of saying that some poverty comes from avoidance and some comes from being robbed.
What it does not mean
This verse does not excuse idleness, and the same book that wrote it wrote the ant poem. What it forecloses is the inference, not the category. No one may look at a poor person and conclude anything about their character, because this book names at least two causes and only one of them belongs to the person. Read together, 6:6–11 is a mirror and 13:23 is the reason it is not a lens.
Related: Proverbs 6:6–11 · Proverbs 14:31 · Proverbs 22:22–23 · Proverbs 29:7
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.