cash crop

Examples of cash crop in the following topics:

• Slavery in the Rice Kingdom

  • Wealthy planters cultivated rice and other cash crops along the southeastern coast, while backwoods subsistence farmers were pushed out to the Appalachian Mountains and backcountry in the later part of the 18th century.
  • The principle cash crop harvested by the South Carolina slave population in the early 18th century was rice, a crop which probably originated in Madagascar and had been introduced into South Carolina in 1694.
  • Once rice was established as the principle cash crop of South Carolina, it brought unprecedented wealth and prosperity to planters and the region.

• Slavery in the North

  • Unlike in the South, northern farms were not large-scale enterprises that focused on producing a single cash crop; instead they were often smaller, more agriculturally diversified enterprises that required fewer laborers.
  • Northern industry and commerce relied on southern cash crop production; therefore, while slavery was actively abolished in the North, most northerners were content to allow slavery to flourish in the southern states.

• A Market Society

  • The large-scale production of cash crops began to replace subsistence farming in the South and West.

• Toward Free Labor

  • In colonial North America, farmers, planters, and shopkeepers found it very difficult to hire free workers, primarily because cash was short and it was so easy for those workers to set up their own farms.
  • The labor-intensive cash crop of tobacco was farmed in the American South by indentured laborers in the 17th and 18th centuries.
  • In the Upper South, where tobacco was the main cash crop, the majority of labor that indentured servants performed was related to field work.
  • The expansion of staple crop production in the colonies led to an increased demand for skilled workers, and the price of indentured agricultural labor increased.

• Inadequate Currency

  • After the American Civil War, farmers in the South had little cash.
  • When the cotton crop was harvested, farmers turned it over to the merchant to pay back their loan.
  • Sometimes there was cash left over.
  • When cotton prices were low, the crop did not cover the debt and the farmer started the next year in the red.
  • The merchant insisted that more cotton, or some other cash crop, be grown—nothing else paid well—and thus came to dictate the crops that a farmer grew.

• The Plantation Economy and the Planter Class

  • Plantation economies rely on the export of cash crops as a source of income.
  • The longer a crop's harvest period, the more efficient plantations are.
  • Plantation crops differ because they need processing immediately after harvesting.
  • Crops such as coconuts, rubber, and cotton are to a lesser extent.
  • Sugar also has a long history as a plantation crop.

• Slavery and Empire

  • The European demand for New World cash crops, especially sugar, tobacco, rice, and cotton, led to a demand for labor to cultivate these crops.
  • Not only were Africans well suited to tropical climates, they also brought special skills and husbandry knowledge for crops such as rice, which the British found useful.

• Jamestown, Virginia

  • His struggle to improve the colony's conditions succeeded—the colonists learned how to raise crops and trade with the nearby Indians, with whom Smith had made peace .
  • Thereafter the settlers waged a relentless war against the Indians, burning and pillaging their villages and cutting down or carrying off their crops.
  • This singular discovery led to an explosion of success as the plant became the colony's major cash crop.

• Economic Conditions

  • Decreases in crop prices and crop failures in the 1880s bred economic discontent among farmers that led to the formation of the Populists.
  • Although crop diversification and the greater focus on cotton as a cash crop offered some potential for farmers to get ahead, other forces worked against that success.
  • The crop failures of the 1880s greatly exacerbated the situation.
  • Unemployment soared and crop prices fell badly.

• Devastation in the South

  • The transportation infrastructure lay in ruins, with little railroad or riverboat service available to move crops and animals to market.
  • Having used most of their capital to purchase slaves, white planters had minimal cash to pay freedmen workers to bring in crops.
  • At harvest time the sharecropper received a share of the crop (from one-third to one-half, with the landowner taking the rest).