Shrunken Cotton Belt

Contrary to what your atlas shows, the Cotton Belt today occupies only a very small area of the South.
Where was the largest area of cotton acreage as a percentage of total area found by the 1960s?

Answers: in the Mississippi River valley, in southern Missouri, eastern Arkansas, and western Mississippi. Today, cotton production is restricted to even smaller acreages and areas in the South. Compare the spread of cotton and slavery from 1790 to1860. Three cotton farmers in California receive in one year the same amount of money as the annual budget for federal organic food research.

The boll weevil larva attacked cotton in the past. Even today, the larva destroys $300 million of cotton. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is developing wasps that will eat the boll weevil larva! Cotton is grown on large acreage and heavily mechanized farms today. Check it out!

Today, the USA is the world's largest exporter of cotton, even though its production costs are far higher than those of African producers in such countries as Mali or Burkina Faso. The U.S.'s 25,000 cotton farmers receive $4 billion of government subsidies in return for producing $3 billion worth of cotton! These kinds of agricultural subsidies push down the world cotton prices, hurting the 11 million cotton producers in West Africa. Indeed, all the rich-western countries spent over $300 billion a year supporting their farmers, more than six times the amount then spend on foreign aid. Contradictory liberal farm policies, also supported by conservatives for their wealthy campaign contributors, do the opposite of their rhetoric.

In addition, the U.S. and other rich countries use tariffs to restrict trade with Third World countries who need trade, not aid, to improve their standard of living. The graph shows that tariffs against agricultural products are much higher than for manufactured products and tariffs are higher for developing countries than rich countries -- the exact opposite is necessary if "free trade" would be practiced by capitalist countries and the rich countries really wanted Third World people to prosper. The U.S. applies tariffs on imports from Bangladesh at 14 percent whereas French imports only have a 1 percent tax rate. The elites in rich countries help each other while harming poor people in their own countries and most of the people in the Majority World.

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 30 April 1996; last revised on 20 November 2007.