agriculture review
by aditya abhishek
The cotton gin was invented in the United States by Eli Whitney in 1973. After the invention of the cotton gin, the production of cotton cloth became easier.
Due to the invention of the cotton gin, the demand for cotton clothes started increasing in the nineteenth century.
At the same time, farm owners in Southern America were struggling to make profits out of their farms because they used to cultivate tobacco.
Tobacco was a less profitable crop and cultivating it on the same farmland for a longer duration resulted in soil fertility depletion just like cotton crop.
But, due to the invention of the cotton gin, growing cotton became profitable as the demand was very high during the nineteenth century.
That's why farmland owners of Southern America started cultivating cotton instead of tobacco. They also used slavery to carry out farming activities.
Soon by the end of the 1850s, the United States became the largest cotton producing and exporting country in the world.
However, it resulted in deforestation, increased slavery, monocropping, etc. which impacted the soil fertility of the region at the cost of profitability.
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