Post Civil War Farming in the South Sharecropping/Tenant - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Post Civil War Farming in the South Sharecropping/Tenant

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Post Civil War Farming in the South Sharecropping/Tenant Farming Causes of sharecropping Slavery abolished Landowners lack labor Small farmers lack capital to buy ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Post Civil War Farming in the South Sharecropping/Tenant


1
Post Civil War Farming in the South
  • Sharecropping/Tenant Farming

2
Causes of sharecropping
  • Slavery abolished
  • Landowners lack labor
  • Small farmers lack capital to buy land
  • (40 acres a mule) large scale land reform never
    occurs. Proposals to confiscate/redistribute
    land fail in Congress.
  • Planters need a work force.

3
Effects of sharecropping
  • Farmers caught in a cycle of debt.
  • Rural poverty for both blacks and whites.
  • Merchants prosper.
  • Agricultural focus shifts from food crops to cash
    crops, therefore the South continues to import
    much of its food.

4
Sharecropping vs. Tenant farming
  • Tenant farmer rents land, owns tools, is more
    independent, and makes decisions on what crops
    will be grown.
  • Higher social status than sharecroppers.

5
Crop-lien economy
  • Merchants supplie sharecroppers with supplies on
    credit and sold their crops to wholesalers/textile
    manufacturers. Merchants secured loans with a
    lien (claim on farmers next crop).
  • Exorbitant interest charges.
  • Many sharecroppers were illiterate and thus
    easily taken advantage of.

6
Postwar changes in southern agriculture
  • Prevented crop diversification
  • Planters (short on capital) didnt invest in new
    equipment or improve the land by crop rotation,
    contour plowing.
  • Soil depletion and land erosion lock the South
    into a cycle of poverty.
  • Tenant farmers trapped in a cycle of debt
    peonage.
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