Could the South be a Breadbasket?

[dcharles]

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

Like I said, the amount of corn that was grown in 1860 is really immaterial to the discussion. The west was not really settled in 1860, which I why I originally used the numbers from 1900. The South was just about as settled in 1900 as it had been in 1860, but the Upper Midwest was far more developed by 1900 than it was in 1860.

The question is, "can the South become a breadbasket?"

And the answer is, that there is no cereal crop which grows better in the South than the North in terms of yield per acre, and that is the important thing. The reason why? The soil.

Let's not get lost in the weeds.

Corn is merely one cereal crop among many. There is also rye, oats, wheat, barley, and buckwheat to consider. In spite of an ephemeral advantage in corn production in 1860 (which has to do with levels of settlement and not growing conditions), the South is a far more hostile environment for the growth of any cereal crop than the Northeast, Great lakes region, and the Upper Midwest.

Again, the reason why is the soil (and to a lesser extent, the terrible rainstorms we get, which constantly wash the aforementioned soil away). Unless this is a geologic POD or a POD where the US border does not even extend to the Mississippi, there is no reason to grow these cereal crops in Georgia or North Carolina when you could grow them in Iowa or Illinois.

Therefore, if there is no advantage in farming wheat in the South as opposed to the North--and in terms of growing conditions, there isn't--then the South won't become the nation's breadbasket.

Of course, if Mexico conquers Kentucky or something like that, then that's a different story. If the South has better growing conditions for cereal crops than the other regions of country X, then that's another story--although i still don't understand why they wouldn grow sugar, cotton, or tobacco and use the money from that to buy the food, but whatever.

 

[Tonifranz]

Like I said, the amount of corn that was grown in 1860 is really immaterial to the discussion. The west was not really settled in 1860, which I why I originally used the numbers from 1900. The South was just about as settled in 1900 as it had been in 1860, but the Upper Midwest was far more developed by 1900 than it was in 1860.

The question is, "can the South become a breadbasket?"

And the answer is, that there is no cereal crop which grows better in the South than the North in terms of yield per acre, and that is the important thing. The reason why? The soil.

Let's not get lost in the weeds.

Corn is merely one cereal crop among many. There is also rye, oats, wheat, barley, and buckwheat to consider. In spite of an ephemeral advantage in corn production in 1860 (which has to do with levels of settlement and not growing conditions), the South is a far more hostile environment for the growth of any cereal crop than the Northeast, Great lakes region, and the Upper Midwest.

Again, the reason why is the soil (and to a lesser extent, the terrible rainstorms we get, which constantly wash the aforementioned soil away). Unless this is a geologic POD or a POD where the US border does not even extend to the Mississippi, there is no reason to grow these cereal crops in Georgia or North Carolina when you could grow them in Iowa or Illinois.

Therefore, if there is no advantage in farming wheat in the South as opposed to the North--and in terms of growing conditions, there isn't--then the South won't become the nation's breadbasket.

Of course, if Mexico conquers Kentucky or something like that, then that's a different story. If the South has better growing conditions for cereal crops than the other regions of country X, then that's another story--although i still don't understand why they wouldn grow sugar, cotton, or tobacco and use the money from that to buy the food, but whatever.

Based on the question in the OP , irrelevant. He’s not asking that the South be more of a breadbasket than the North. Only if the South can be a breadbasket, period, and could he South be a net food exporter?

So what if the North produces more per acre? That’s not the point of his query.

A breadbasket is a place that can produce more food that it can consume, and it can export food and never be in danger of starvation. It can feed a region like the Caribbean. That’s the definition based on what the OP has in mind based on his query about exporting food.


By that definition, the South is a breadbasket. So what if it was not the most fertile soil? It does not matter if it still produces large amounts of grain and corns despite the soil. Maybe the North or West produces more or has richer soil? Irrelevant because the North being a breadbasket does not mean the South isn’t too.

 

[dcharles]

Based on the question in the OP , irrelevant. He’s not asking that the South be more of a breadbasket than the North. Only if the South can be a breadbasket, period, and could he South be a net food exporter?

Well of course it's relevant. If we're asking if the South could be a breadbasket, if it is in the same polity as the Northern grain producing regions,--whether or not that polity is the US--it would not be. If it is included in a polity where it has the best growing conditions for cereal grains, then maybe.

But only if there was some compelling reason to cultivate cereal grains and sell those instead of cultivating and selling more profitable cash crops, like sugar, cotton or tobacco, and then buying food with that money. I don't really know what that circumstance would be, but its probably possible for it to exist.

And this whole tangent got started bc the OP said that the South was noted for its good soil, which it does not have. Other people needed verification for that, which is good. Discussion is what we're here for, and understanding why the South was not the breadbasket of the US IOTL is useful for understanding why it may or may not be in an ATL.

A breadbasket is a place that can produce more food that it can consume, and it can export food and never be in danger of starvation.The breadbasket of a country is a region which, because of richness of soil and/or advantageous climate, produces large quantities of wheat or other grain, according to Wikipedia.


By that definition, the South is a breadbasket. So what if it was not the most fertile soil? It does not matter if it still produces large amounts of grain and corns despite the soil. Maybe the North or West produces more or has richer soil? Irrelevant because the North being a breadbasket does not mean the South isn’t too.

So if we're taking the position that the South is already a breadbasket, then the whole thread is irrelevant. All we needed to do was cut and paste the Wikipedia definition and save ourselves a lot of time.

 

[Tonifranz]

Well of course it's relevant. If we're asking if the South could be a breadbasket, if it is in the same polity as the Northern grain producing regions,--whether or not that polity is the US--it would not be. If it is included in a polity where it has the best growing conditions for cereal grains, then maybe.

But only if there was some compelling reason to cultivate cereal grains and sell those instead of cultivating and selling more profitable cash crops, like sugar, cotton or tobacco, and then buying food with that money. I don't really know what that circumstance would be, but its probably possible for it to exist.

And this whole tangent got started bc the OP said that the South was noted for its good soil, which it does not have. Other people needed verification for that, which is good. Discussion is what we're here for, and understanding why the South was not the breadbasket of the US IOTL is useful for understanding why it may or may not be in an ATL.



So if we're taking the position that the South is already a breadbasket, then the whole thread is irrelevant. All we needed to do was cut and paste the Wikipedia definition and save ourselves a lot of time.

The definition is more in line with the question of the OP. Can the South be a net food exporter? The corollary to it is can it feed itself then produce enouth to export to another?

This thread showed me two things. First that the South does not have the richest soil. Second, despite that, despite growing cotton and tobacco as the major crops, it still grew enough food to maybe produce more than the North at a smaller population in 1860.

As for the economics OF it? The OP already discounted the question that it is probably more economical to produce cash crops and buy food. So we don’t have to argue about it.

So can the South feed itself without imports? Yes. Can it then export food to another region. Yes.


That is the definition of the OP of a breadbasket.

So my answer to his query is YES.

 

[Lampiao]

No one has yet adressed the most obvious issue: Why is corn suddenly more profitable than cotton?

 

[wtw]

No one has yet adressed the most obvious issue: Why is corn suddenly more profitable than cotton?

That is why I mentioned the earlier thread. You need to make cotton go away in order for something like this to happen. Cotton was like Crack to the South, they were not going to leave it willingly.

 

[Lampiao]

That is why I mentioned the earlier thread. You need to make cotton go away in order for something like this to happen. Cotton was like Crack to the South, they were not going to leave it willingly.

Still, I think we need something more than a plague to destroy it. The phylloxera, for instance, was very damaging for the European wine industry but never really destroyed it.

 

[wtw]

Still, I think we need something more than a plague to destroy it. The phylloxera, for instance, was very damaging for the European wine industry but never really destroyed it.

The thing is you can't, but with that weevil it will take time to burn through, years if not at that point decades due to lack of pesticides to stunt cotton that it would force many in the South to move on to other ventures.

 

[Lampiao]

The thing is you can't, but with that weevil it will take time to burn through, years if not at that point decades due to lack of pesticides to stunt cotton that it would force many in the South to move on to other ventures.

If the demand remains high, I'm sure they'll invest in technology to avoid the plague. And even if they don't, the South can grow other types of cash crop that will always be more profitable than corn or any other staple.

 

[wtw]

If the demand remains high, I'm sure they'll invest in technology to avoid the plague. And even if they don't, the South can grow other types of cash crop that will always be more profitable than corn or any other staple.

True and there are other examples historically like tobacco and indigo. However there are places where cotton grows that either of those two do not do that well in and other crops will force some, not all but some to go to other options.

 

[wcv215]

it still grew enough food to maybe produce more than the North at a smaller population in 1860.

I don't know why people keep bringing this up as if it matters. Why is it so shocking that a region that's more industrialized, more dedicated to trade, etc. isn't going to be as focused on farming as the area where farming was the main focus.

 

[Dave Howery]

history learner:
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.

per capita basis? That seems like a crappy way to judge production. The north had more population, but a lot bigger percentage of the north wasn't in agriculture... far more in industry, etc. Also, I can't really tell from your article there... did the south outproduce the north in pure numbers of bushels of corn? If they did, that's fairly impressive, considering the population differences.
Someone mentioned the heavy clay content of a big chunk of soil across the south (we're cursed with it here too), so I'm wondering... how do potatoes grow down south? I know they don't do well in heavy clay (I manage to grow them here, but only after adding a LOT of compost and stuff to break up the clay)…

 

[Vuu]

Soil not so good, but growing season is.

Requires to, uh, manually adjust the soil to get true breadbasket status

There's a good reason why plantation economy was popular in the southern USA - not because of cotton, but simply because you needed fuckhuge fields to actually make a decent crop yield

 

[History Learner]

Like I said, the amount of corn that was grown in 1860 is really immaterial to the discussion.

Production of cereal crops in a region is irrelevant to a discussion about whether a region can grow cereal crops? What?

The west was not really settled in 1860, which I why I originally used the numbers from 1900. The South was just about as settled in 1900 as it had been in 1860, but the Upper Midwest was far more developed by 1900 than it was in 1860.

You cited the 1860 census, so I'm curious as to how that related to your claim here of talking about 1900.

The question is, "can the South become a breadbasket?" And the answer is, that there is no cereal crop which grows better in the South than the North in terms of yield per acre, and that is the important thing. The reason why? The soil.

We've already established this was false and that the South held both a competitive and absolute advantage in the production of corn.

Corn is merely one cereal crop among many. There is also rye, oats, wheat, barley, and buckwheat to consider. In spite of an ephemeral advantage in corn production in 1860 (which has to do with levels of settlement and not growing conditions), the South is a far more hostile environment for the growth of any cereal crop than the Northeast, Great lakes region, and the Upper Midwest.

And Corn was the overwhelming crop grown in the United States in 1860 and to this day by several factors. By your logic here, the United States as a whole is not and never has been a breadbasket because American farms focus on corn; we all know this to be false. Further, once again, the South had a competitive advantage in corn growing and this advantage was not derided from labor supply. See:

Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South, The American Economic Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jun., 1977), pp. 275-296

Again, the reason why is the soil (and to a lesser extent, the terrible rainstorms we get, which constantly wash the aforementioned soil away). Unless this is a geologic POD or a POD where the US border does not even extend to the Mississippi, there is no reason to grow these cereal crops in Georgia or North Carolina when you could grow them in Iowa or Illinois.

As has been repeatedly noted, the soil issue is largely irrelevant because in the South methods of soil improvement have long since been around. Edmund Ruffin, for example, got his start in utilizing marl to reduce soil acidity. The mass of literature since for the last few decades have also largely debunked the soil exhaustion hypothesis with regards to the South. Further, you're attempting to play games by citing North Carolina and Georgia; most corn in the South was grown in the Upper South.

 

[History Learner]

The South producing more corn overall than the North doesn't mean that yields were higher in the South.

That's irrelevant, first of all. As long as the South produces massive amounts of cereal crops it can export while feeding itself, that makes it a breadbasket. Regardless of that, however, we know the South held both an absolute and competitive advantage over the North in terms of production.

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.

And? This too is irrelevant because we know it didn't stop the South from, as noted, being a breadbasket IOTL.

 

[BlondieBC]

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.

Very feasible if their is the demand. Arkansas is a major rice producer. Basically, Cotton land is not replace by rice production. Cotton was done on the higher, dryer ground. If you want rice production, one cleared idle swamp land and began production.

Cotton land is easy to convert to corn land. This is what has happened in eastern Arkansas over the last few decades.

So if there was a demand for the food and it was economical, then the USA could have been the breadbasket of say Europe. It was just economics holding it back. If I wanted to write this type of ATL, I think it would run with a double POD. Add a Boll Weevil to USA cotton then hit European food production hard with something like a wheat rust. When the economics shift, the south would switch to food production.

 

[BlondieBC]

Like I said, the amount of corn that was grown in 1860 is really immaterial to the discussion. The west was not really settled in 1860, which I why I originally used the numbers from 1900. The South was just about as settled in 1900 as it had been in 1860, but the Upper Midwest was far more developed by 1900 than it was in 1860.

The question is, "can the South become a breadbasket?"

And the answer is, that there is no cereal crop which grows better in the South than the North in terms of yield per acre, and that is the important thing. The reason why? The soil.

Let's not get lost in the weeds.

Corn is merely one cereal crop among many. There is also rye, oats, wheat, barley, and buckwheat to consider. In spite of an ephemeral advantage in corn production in 1860 (which has to do with levels of settlement and not growing conditions), the South is a far more hostile environment for the growth of any cereal crop than the Northeast, Great lakes region, and the Upper Midwest.

Again, the reason why is the soil (and to a lesser extent, the terrible rainstorms we get, which constantly wash the aforementioned soil away). Unless this is a geologic POD or a POD where the US border does not even extend to the Mississippi, there is no reason to grow these cereal crops in Georgia or North Carolina when you could grow them in Iowa or Illinois.

Therefore, if there is no advantage in farming wheat in the South as opposed to the North--and in terms of growing conditions, there isn't--then the South won't become the nation's breadbasket.

Of course, if Mexico conquers Kentucky or something like that, then that's a different story. If the South has better growing conditions for cereal crops than the other regions of country X, then that's another story--although i still don't understand why they wouldn grow sugar, cotton, or tobacco and use the money from that to buy the food, but whatever.

You are looking at the wrong crops. South is humid sub tropical with some of the best soils in the world in the Mississippi river valley. Rice, Soybeans, Winter Wheat. Three crops over two years is the most traditional high food production rotation.

 

[dcharles]

Production of cereal crops in a region is irrelevant to a discussion about whether a region can grow cereal crops? What?

Come on now. I didn't say that, and that is clear. You were citing data from a specific year, which is 1860, and you are citing data about a specific crop, corn. This thread is not about the amount of corn grown in 1860. It is about whether the South would act as the [or a] nation's breadbasket. Corn in 1860 doesn't tell the whole story. Corn production in 1860 doesn't even tell the whole story of grain production in 1860.

Since there are many cereal crops and North America did not, in fact, sink into the Pacific in 1862, its important to look at the question more broadly.

When I hear something referred to as a place's breadbasket, what comes to mind is that place's chief grain producing region. Maybe Wikipedia disagrees, but I think that's a pretty common understanding of the term.

So if I'm asking if region X could be the breadbasket of polity Y, then my main questions are going to be "can X produce grain," "is grain the most profitable thing for them to produce," and "is there another region in polity Y other than X which is more suited to growing grain?"

The answers here are yes, no, and probably so.

Clearly, grain can be grown in the South. Corn grows pretty well here, the other cereal crops? Okay to meh.

Is grain the most profitable thing to produce in the South? God no.

Are there other places which are more suited to growing grain?

In North America, emphatically so. The South is not the best place in North America to grow any type of grain, including corn, but it is a better place to grow grain than many other places. This is important. If Denmark conquers the Bible Belt, the Danes will probably do most of their corn farming here, and therefore the South would act as the cornbreadbasket to Denmark.

If the South exists within the same country as these other, far superior, regions for growing grain of all kinds, then probably not.

Because why on earth would you undertake backbreaking toil to grow something that other places can grow better and won't make you as much money as the same time spent growing another crop could?

You cited the 1860 census, so I'm curious as to how that related to your claim here of talking about 1900.

Check out post 12. If that was unclear, I'm sorry for not being as articulate as I should.

We've already established this was false and that the South held both a competitive and absolute advantage in the production of corn.

Who is we? When was this established? I have seen some data that showed that the South grew more corn in terms of bushels than other regions of the country in 1860, but it has never been the best place to grow it. In 1860, the land west of the Mississippi--where some of the world's best land for growing grain of all kinds is located--was sparsely settled. The South wasn't, and it was much bigger than the states of the Old Northwest, which is really the breadbasket area that exists east of the Mississippi.

And Corn was the overwhelming crop grown in the United States in 1860 and to this day by several factors. By your logic here, the United States as a whole is not and never has been a breadbasket because American farms focus on corn; we all know this to be false.

Haha. I feel like I'm in a debate with Phaedrus.

That is not remotely what my logic says. My logic says that bread is made from many kinds of grain, and therefore if I want to determine where breadbaskets might appear, I should take a survey of cereal crops in general and look at where they have the best environment in which to grow, and where the incentives for growers to grow them are the strongest. Just picking one grain and seeing who grew the most of it in a random year doesn't answer answer the question.

Further, once again, the South had a competitive advantage in corn growing and this advantage was not derided from labor supply. See:

Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South, The American Economic Review, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jun., 1977), pp. 275-296

This article? https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/63579/explainingrelati00davi.pdf?sequence=1

That article only mentions the word corn three times. One is in the bibliography and the other is in a graph, and the third is in the introduction to the graph.

As has been repeatedly noted, the soil issue is largely irrelevant because in the South methods of soil improvement have long since been around. Edmund Ruffin, for example, got his start in utilizing marl to reduce soil acidity.

That was certainly a cause of his. But that doesn't mean that everyone read "an Essay on Calcereous Manures" and that was that.

The mass of literature since for the last few decades have also largely debunked the soil exhaustion hypothesis with regards to the South.

What is "the mass?"

Further, you're attempting to play games by citing North Carolina and Georgia; most corn in the South was grown in the Upper South.

Don't comment on my state of mind. There've been many times when I could interpret your comments as cherry picking, setting up straw men, or throwing out red herrings.

But I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and not start a flame war.

Also, where do you think North Carolina is?

Hint: It ain't the Deep South.

Also: It rhymes with "supper mouth."

 

[dcharles]

per capita basis? That seems like a crappy way to judge production.

It's not a great way to judge production, but even so, a North v South dichotomy isn't really useful. Comparing the two agricultural regions--South and West--to one another is much more useful. On that measure, the West (defined as IL, IN, IA, KY, KS, MI, MN, MO, OH, WI, and NE) kills it across all grain categories.

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/agriculture/1860b-04.pdf

page cxxix.

 

[Tonifranz]

Come on now. I didn't say that, and that is clear. You were citing data from a specific year, which is 1860, and you are citing data about a specific crop, corn. This thread is not about the amount of corn grown in 1860. It is about whether the South would act as the [or a] nation's breadbasket. Corn in 1860 doesn't tell the whole story. Corn production in 1860 doesn't even tell the whole story of grain production in 1860.

Since there are many cereal crops and North America did not, in fact, sink into the Pacific in 1862, its important to look at the question more broadly.

When I hear something referred to as a place's breadbasket, what comes to mind is that place's chief grain producing region. Maybe Wikipedia disagrees, but I think that's a pretty common understanding of the term.

So if I'm asking if region X could be the breadbasket of polity Y, then my main questions are going to be "can X produce grain," "is grain the most profitable thing for them to produce," and "is there another region in polity Y other than X which is more suited to growing grain?"

The answers here are yes, no, and probably so.

Clearly, grain can be grown in the South. Corn grows pretty well here, the other cereal crops? Okay to meh.

Is grain the most profitable thing to produce in the South? God no.

Are there other places which are more suited to growing grain?

In North America, emphatically so. The South is not the best place in North America to grow any type of grain, including corn, but it is a better place to grow grain than many other places. This is important. If Denmark conquers the Bible Belt, the Danes will probably do most of their corn farming here, and therefore the South would act as the cornbreadbasket to Denmark.

If the South exists within the same country as these other, far superior, regions for growing grain of all kinds, then probably not.

Because why on earth would you undertake backbreaking toil to grow something that other places can grow better and won't make you as much money as the same time spent growing another crop could?



Check out post 12. If that was unclear, I'm sorry for not being as articulate as I should.



Who is we? When was this established? I have seen some data that showed that the South grew more corn in terms of bushels than other regions of the country in 1860, but it has never been the best place to grow it. In 1860, the land west of the Mississippi--where some of the world's best land for growing grain of all kinds is located--was sparsely settled. The South wasn't, and it was much bigger than the states of the Old Northwest, which is really the breadbasket area that exists east of the Mississippi.



Haha. I feel like I'm in a debate with Phaedrus.

That is not remotely what my logic says. My logic says that bread is made from many kinds of grain, and therefore if I want to determine where breadbaskets might appear, I should take a survey of cereal crops in general and look at where they have the best environment in which to grow, and where the incentives for growers to grow them are the strongest. Just picking one grain and seeing who grew the most of it in a random year doesn't answer answer the question.



This article? https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/63579/explainingrelati00davi.pdf?sequence=1

That article only mentions the word corn three times. One is in the bibliography and the other is in a graph, and the third is in the introduction to the graph.





That was certainly a cause of his. But that doesn't mean that everyone read "an Essay on Calcereous Manures" and that was that.



What is "the mass?"



Don't comment on my state of mind. There've been many times when I could interpret your comments as cherry picking, setting up straw men, or throwing out red herrings.

But I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and not start a flame war.

Also, where do you think North Carolina is?

Hint: It ain't the Deep South.

Also: It rhymes with "supper mouth."

With your criteria, I agree with you about the South perhaps not being a breadbasket.

But that is not was being asked by the OP. I’ll post it again.

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.

He is merely asking if the South could be a net food exporter. That is his definition of a breadbasket, and as it is his thread, we should limit ourselves to what he is looking for instead of redefining what a breadbasket is.

And notice that he already is discounting that producing other crops and buying food is cheaper. So we should also not argue that it’s more economical to plant cash crops, since the OP already knows that and isn’t asking that.

So based on his definition and what is looking for, then the South can be a breadbasket.