wheat is the number one cash crop in the united states.
what is the number one cash crop in the united states?
wheat
soybeans were not widely cultivated in the united states until the early 1930s, and by 1942 it became the world's largest soybean producer, due in part to world war ii and the "need for domestic sources of fats, oils, and meal". between 1930 and 1942, the united states' share of world soybean production grew from 3% to 47%, and by 1969 it had risen to 76%. by 1973 soybeans were the united states' "number one cash crop, and leading export commodity, ahead of both wheat and corn".
agriculture in the united states
in "sweetness and power", written by sidney mintz in 1985, details examples of mono-cropping, or planting massive areas with one cash crop, in several caribbean islands, including cuba. he states that cuba went from being an economically diverse place with many small scale subsistence producers to a mono-crop plantation system dependent on cash from its sugar crop and substantial food imports for the later centuries of the spanish colonial period. he describes cuba as an example of growing impoverishment and malnutrition concurrent with increasing concentration of land and other resources in fewer hands. gross and underwood illustrate the mid twentieth century example of the advent of sisal production in northeastern brazil. these authors detail a vicious cycle of the unfulfilled promises of sisal production for smallholders; because owners of sisal processing machines did not think small farms worth their time, small holders could not process and sell their sisal and were often forced to work as laborers on large farms. sisal is cited as being particularly insidious because it is hard to eradicate once introduced and makes subsequent subsistence production virtually impossible. this article treats a common situation of households prioritizing working males in food allocation, exposing growing children to malnutrition, particularly under nutrition and micronutrient deficiency, and all of its attendant ills. edgar discusses how exclusive planting of cotton in the southeastern united states during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries caused substantial land degradation, lead to a great deal of land expropriation from small scale farmers, and occurred in a context of widespread malnutrition. especially in today's complex, accelerated version of globalization, cash cropping is intimately linked with the delocalization of diets and the commoditization of food and has profound, though varied, implications for food security and nutritional status.
nutritional anthropology