USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Most favoured by slave owners were commercial crops such as olives, grapes, sugar, cotton, tobacco, coffee, and certain forms of rice that demanded intense labour to plant, considerable tending throughout the growing season, and significant labour for harvesting.

Detailed explanation-2: -By 1850, of the 3.2 million enslaved people in the country’s fifteen slave states, 1.8 million were producing cotton. By 1860, slave labor was producing over two billion pounds of cotton per year. Indeed, American cotton soon made up two-thirds of the global supply, and production continued to soar.

Detailed explanation-3: -Prominent crops included cotton, rubber, sugar cane, tobacco, figs, rice, kapok, sisal, and species in the genus Indigofera, used to produce indigo dye. The longer a crop’s harvest period, the more efficient plantations become.

Detailed explanation-4: -Plantation crops were determined by the soil and climate, with tobacco, cotton, rice, indigo (only second to rice as export and used in the European market for dye) and sugarcane each predominating in a particular zone of the southeast. Livestock and timber also played an important role.

Detailed explanation-5: -When they were not raising a cash crop, slaves grew other crops, such as corn or potatoes; cared for livestock; and cleared fields, cut wood, repaired buildings and fences. On cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations, slaves worked together in gangs under the supervision of a supervisor or a driver.