Alabama Agriculture: Growing for You and Me

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Agriculture has been practiced in what is now Alabama for centuries. Alabama agriculture has changed considerably since the mid-1860s, when cotton was king and Alabama was known as "The Cotton State." One hundred years ago almost four million acres were planted to cotton, and today only 1.3 million acres are devoted to all agricultural crops” (Mitchell, 2007). Agriculture in Alabama is mainly cotton and peanuts in the past they grew cattle corn and cotton. The Native Americans started Alabama off with slash-and-burn agriculture, in which they cut and burned forests to make room for their fields of corn, beans, and squash.
As the Indians used slash and burn to make room for crops when the Americans came to Alabama they learned this type of agriculture and started growing cotton. This led to several events that dramatically affected Alabama's early agricultural development. The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain created a greedy appetite for cotton fiber, and in 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new type of cotton gin in the United States, which lowered the cost of processing fiber. “By the time Alabama became a state in 1819, the interior of the state was easily accessed via the Tombigbee, Warrior, Alabama, and Chattahoochee rivers. Crops could also be transported to European and New England markets via the ports of Mobile and Apalachicola, Florida. Settlers poured into the new state with one objective to grow cotton. As time passed there was almost four million acres of cotton growing in Alabama” (Mitchell, 2007). As time progressed people thought of a new type of agriculture.
Farmers started sharecropping this replaced the old plantation system. “Sharecropping is a form of ...

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...rn Alabama. Almost 10,000 acres of commercial citrus was grown in Mobile and Baldwin counties by 1920. In recent years Alabama farm income from cattle exceeded that from cotton. Alabama's landscape today is dominated by woodlands, pine plantations, scattered pastureland, and small rural and suburban homesteads that stretch between major metropolitan areas. Few modern Alabamians depend totally on agricultural production for their livelihood, but as of 2005 there were 43,500 farms on 8.6 million acres that sold over $3.3 billion worth of commodities” (Mitchell, 2007). The wiregrass region is agriculturally diverse producing cotton, peanuts, poultry, cattle, some vegetables, and forestry products. Following cotton, peanuts dominated the Wiregrass during most of the twentieth century. Therefore, Alabama and the Wiregrass agriculture continues growing for you and me.

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