Could the South be a Breadbasket?

[Raigaua]

The southern US and the Caribbean were early noted for their rich soil; and, subsequently profit took over and nutrient draining cash crops were planted.

My question is if a food-limited nation managed to acquire part of this land, could they make it a net food exporter instead?

This is discounting that growing cash crops to export and then buy food is probably cheaper; let's assume they want control over supply.

 

[History Learner]

The southern US and the Caribbean were early noted for their rich soil; and, subsequently profit took over and nutrient draining cash crops were planted.

My question is if a food-limited nation managed to acquire part of this land, could they make it a net food exporter instead?

This is discounting that growing cash crops to export and then buy food is probably cheaper; let's assume they want control over supply.

The South produced more corn than the North did, so yes.

 

[Revachah]

Louisiana basically was a rice basket for Haiti. There was no need for it after Haiti's independence.

 

[wtw]

Absolutely, there was a thread a while back about the boll weevil coming before the civil war and I listed so much that the South could have done if it was forced off cotton. That is the main issue historically, it took the boll weevil to kick the south off cotton.

 

[Jared]

The Deep South's staple crops during the nineteenth century were basically corn (maize) and cotton. With a side order of hogs that were partially corn-fed.

The cotton was of course the most noted export in OTL, with the corn mostly used to feed the workforce. But if there's a lack of cotton and/or an export market for corn, there's no reason that the South can't grow that en masse.

 

[Lampiao]

I assume the best land would be used for cash crops. If growing corn, somehow, becomes more profitable than cotton, planters would almost certainly change. That's simply capitalism working its way.

 

[BELFAST]

The Deep South's staple crops during the nineteenth century were basically corn (maize) and cotton. With a side order of hogs that were partially corn-fed.

The cotton was of course the most noted export in OTL, with the corn mostly used to feed the workforce. But if there's a lack of cotton and/or an export market for corn, there's no reason that the South can't grow that en masse.

As far as I know Rice, was a major crop too.

 

[Jared]

As far as I know Rice was a major crop too.

Depends how you define major crop, but it paled into comparison to cotton or corn. The pre-war rice production from the Confederate states was around 187 million pounds. The exported cotton was around 1.78 billion pounds. (The total production of cotton was 5 million bales, but I can't remember the conversion rate of cotton bales to pounds). The production of corn was around 280 million bushels, which depending on how much a bushel was in pounds (it varies) would be somewhere around 13.4 billion pounds.

Even more importantly, the production of rice was geographically constrained to the lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia. They were already growing about as much rice as they could; it was not feasible to make a major expansion of that. In comparison, there was scope to increase the production and/or export of corn if there was a market for it.

 

[dcharles]

The southern US and the Caribbean were early noted for their rich soil;

I don't know about the Caribbean, but I do know that the South as a whole does not have good soil. At all. It has a good climate and a long growing season. This was noted very early on in American history, so I don't know who was saying the opposite, but whatever they said, they were wrong.

The vast majority of the soil in the South is ultisol--red clay to regular folks--and it isn't at all fertile soil.

See: https://www.soils.org/discover-soils/soil-basics/soil-types/ultisols

 

[FleetMac]

I don't know about the Caribbean, but I do know that the South as a whole does not have good soil. At all. It has a good climate and a long growing season. This was noted very early on in American history, so I don't know who was saying the opposite, but whatever they said, they were wrong.

The vast majority of the soil in the South is ultisol--red clay to regular folks--and it isn't at all fertile soil.

See: https://www.soils.org/discover-soils/soil-basics/soil-types/ultisols

This is overstated; while ultisols aren't as fertile as, say, mollisols, they have a high clay content and are very fertilizer-receptive which offsets high acidity levels (putting it in the middle of the road in terms of practical fertility).

 

[edgeworthy]

I assume the best land would be used for cash crops. If growing corn, somehow, becomes more profitable than cotton, planters would almost certainly change. That's simply capitalism working its way.

There's a potential for a twist in the old European Intervention convolution here.

There have been a near infinite number of posts about the significance of Northern Corn in determining just how events and nations were effected. (In reality very little, it barely gets a mention in either Hansard or the Cabinet Papers, especially when compared to Cotton. Even in debates where it is brought up it is vastly overshadowed by anything else).
However, if Southern Corn Imports & Exports were a profitable matter in European Markets?

 

[dcharles]

This is overstated; while ultisols aren't as fertile as, say, mollisols, they have a high clay content and are very fertilizer-receptive which offsets high acidity levels (putting it in the middle of the road in terms of practical fertility).

Shrug. The poor quality of the ultisol type soil in the South is a major reason that the land wore out so quickly, fueling the slave economy, westward expansion and so much that lead up to the Civil War.

Saying it is poor soil is not overstating anything. It just isn't good soil. No less an authority than the Soil Science Society of America says so, which is in the link I posted.

Just because you can add things to the soil to make it more productive doesn't mean isn't bad. In fact, it means just the opposite. If it was good, you wouldn't have to add as much--or anything.

And regardless of all of this--the Midwest is Eden for most cereal crops. The yields are much higher than in the South. As long as a Midwest exists, the South has no competitive advantage in this area. I mean, the South might be a "breadbasket" in an ironically mercantilist Confederacy, but never in the US.

See: https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/11350853ch3.pdf

On my pdf viewer, charts on page 56 gives the yield per acre of bushels of corn in 1900--when the use of fertilizer was less common than today. There is no Southern state in the top ten. IN fact, if you disqualify border states like WV, OK, MO, and MD, then the highest ranking Southern state is TX, in 33rd place. That is well behind such noted powerhouse corn producers as Hawaii, Vermont, and Rhode Island. If you keep on scrolling, you'll see the same information for oats, barley, buckwheat, wheat, and rye. It's ditto across the board. Southern states don't even place in the top half. Now that that's established, if I could direct your attention to the maps that begin on page 40 in my pdf viewer, which map out the information that is explained in the charts, you'll notice a broad trend in the maps, which show that the most productive acreages for cereal crops are consistently in the Northeast and New England, the Great Lakes region, and the Upper Midwest.




Now look at this:

 

[Thoresby]

Now look at this:

A brief glance at your extremely useful map does show that the Mississippi has reasonably good soil which combined with it's plentiful water and good climate shows why it was such an agriculturally productive reason. But the rest of the south does look fairly unattractive.

 

[dcharles]

A brief glance at your extremely useful map does show that the Mississippi has reasonably good soil which combined with it's plentiful water and good climate shows why it was such an agriculturally productive reason. But the rest of the south does look fairly unattractive.

Oh yeah. The Delta's some of the best land in world. The dirt's as black as cast iron, the rains are plentiful, and the growing season is all the time.

 

[History Learner]

And regardless of all of this--the Midwest is Eden for most cereal crops. The yields are much higher than in the South. As long as a Midwest exists, the South has no competitive advantage in this area. I mean, the South might be a "breadbasket" in an ironically mercantilist Confederacy, but never in the US.

Except this is false. The South produced more corn than the entire North and had not only an absolute advantage in the production but also a competitive advantage. Both Southern Free and Slave labor farming was more productive than the North.

 

[Arkenfolm]

The rather poor soil of the Appalachian foothills in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia was used to grow the grain used to feed the slaves in Virginia and the Carolinas, including the notorious slave breeders.

Much of Kentucky and Tennessee is known for corn production, and no doubt the land used for tobacco cultivation could be used for corn production as well. This corn helped produce the famous Southern whisky (decimated by Prohibition--at one point Robertson County, Tennessee was one of the largest producers of whisky in the US). Even without fertiliser, I know people who (in the Highland Rim, the hills around the Nashville Basin, which has stony clay soil) have grown good-quality tomatoes, cucumber, sweet potato, regular potatoes, etc. in simple gardens. Crops like those, along with squash, pumpkin, apples, etc. can be grown in the region. The area of course has many local rivers to allow for irrigation in drought years.

Overall, I think a modern CSA would be a food exporter.

 

[dcharles]

Except this is false. The South produced more corn than the entire North and had not only an absolute advantage in the production but also a competitive advantage. Both Southern Free and Slave labor farming was more productive than the North

If they did, the census bureau didn't know about it. See: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/agriculture/1860b-04.pdf

Page cxxix. It's the amount of grain per person. The West is a lot more than the South.

Check out this too: https://www.nytimes.com/1860/08/04/...eir-influence-upon-commerce-and-industry.html

But regardless, this is talking about whether the South could have become a "breadbasket," which implies a lot more than corn. Answering that question also has to factor in the settlement of the West, which means that no matter how much corn the South grew in 1850 or 60, it would always be a worse environment for cereal crops than many other regions of the country, hence the point about the soil.

This should not be a controversial statement.

The South is not the "breadbasket" of anything IOTL. This explains why. It's the soil.

 

[History Learner]

If they did, the census bureau didn't know about it. See: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/agriculture/1860b-04.pdf

Page cxxix.

But regardless, this is talking about whether the South could have become a "breadbasket," which implies a lot more than corn. Answering that question also has to factor in the settlement of the West, which means that no matter how much corn the South grew in 1850 or 60, it would always be a worse environment for cereal crops than many other regions of the country, hence the point about the soil.

This should not be a controversial statement.

The South is not the "breadbasket" of anything IOTL. This explains why. It's the soil.

It's a controversial statement because it's false.

The Pre-Civil War South's Leading Crop, Corn by Donald L. Kemmerer, Agricultural History, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Oct., 1949), pp. 236-239:

As can be seen from Table 1 the South produced more corn than the North in all three of these census years. On a per capita basis Southern supremacy in corn production was even more marked, for the North was the more populous region. The North's population was double that of the South in 1859. Nor should the fact be overlooked that corn was the leading grain crop of the Nation, being twice as important as wheat, rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat combined. When analyzed, the corn production figures for 1839, 1849, and 1859 all tell about the same story.

For the purposes at hand, therefore, it will suffice to examine one set. The middle year, 1849, has been selected because the figures are more complete than for 1839, and the year is not at the very end of the period under investigation, as 1859 is. Table 2 reveals that in 1849 the 15 Southern States and the District of Columbia produced about 60 percent of the Nation's corn crop. Of the 16 leading corn-producing States in the Nation, North and South, 11 were in the South. True, the leading corn States were in the North but so were most of the States with little corn production. The upper South more than the western North deserved to be called the Corn Belt. In 1839 the three leading corn States were Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, and as a region the upper South always led the Midwest in corn production.

Table 3 shows that corn excelled cotton in the South not only in weight, which was to be expected, but also in acreage cultivated and in value, neither of which is usually realized. Whether the modest figure of 200 pounds of cotton to the acre is taken- that was the average in North Carolina and Alabama about 1905-or the more generous estimate of 530 pounds to the acre for the South by J. D. B. DeBow in 1852, corn acreage was several times greater than cotton acreage. Even if the worst possible yield for cotton per acre is compared to the best possible yield for corn, corn acreage exceeded that of cotton. The truth must be that the great fields of cotton made more impression on everyone than the numerous fields and plots of corn. The situation resembled that prevailing in the cattle industry after the Civil War when the Great Plains States were famous for their vast herds but actually had fewer cattle in the aggregate than all the Eastern farms. The Great Plains States did a smaller business on a grand scale whereas the many farms of the East conducted a larger business on a small scale.

Here's the table in question by the way:

 

[Kaze]

There was a discounted theory that the good soil of the South as a bread-basket was one of the reasons for the Civil War

-- bare with me --

The theory goes that the Northern cities could not support their city populations with the farms they had, so a war was "engineered" to steal the land from the South in order to feed the North.

I know, it is a rotten theory - but it is out there in some of the Lost-Causers.

 

[mosodake]

This is overstated; while ultisols aren't as fertile as, say, mollisols, they have a high clay content and are very fertilizer-receptive which offsets high acidity levels (putting it in the middle of the road in terms of practical fertility).

On the contrary, clay soils take more than three times the amount of lime than sandy soils to raise the pH to a level that is ideal for growing crops. Adding fertilizer doesn't help if the nutrients become unavailable to plants due to the low pH. At very low pH, many plants suffer from aluminum toxicity. Short of raising the pH of the soil, there's no way to counteract that.

Except this is false. The South produced more corn than the entire North and had not only an absolute advantage in the production but also a competitive advantage. Both Southern Free and Slave labor farming was more productive than the North.

The South producing more corn overall than the North doesn't mean that yields were higher in the South. Without knowing the acreage under production, you have no way of determining yield. Also, away from alluvial areas, the higher rainfall, higher temperatures, shallower soils, and lower soil pH means that soils in the South are exhausted faster and more prone to erosion. Disease and insect pressure in the South is also much, much higher.