Economy of The Confederate States of America - Agriculture

Agriculture

The main prewar agricultural products of the Confederate States were cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane, with hogs, cattle grain and vegetable plots. In 1862, there was a severe drought that, despite efforts to switch from cotton planting to grain farming, caused food shortages and even bread riots in 1863-64. The harvests were fairly abundant after 1862, but often went to waste as they could not be harvested or moved to markets. Corn was raised in large quantities, and, in general, the raising of food products instead of tobacco and cotton was a necessity.

The scarcity of food in the armies and cities was due mostly to the shortage of male labor, the disruption of transportation and finance. Compounding the problem was the ever-increasing number of refugees flooding into cities; food distribution became increasingly harder, and at times, impossible.

The progressive destruction of the southern railroad network, along with rapid inflation, affected women in the cities especially hard as they found food prices too high to afford. This could be seen in the infamous Richmond bread riots of April, 1863, when a large mob of starving women in the city looted stores for food, ignoring the pleas of President Jefferson Davis who stood upon a cart to toss coins to the women, who dispersed only after he threatened to order a company of militia to open fire. This and other stories of hardship on the home front greatly demoralized Confederate soldiers when they received letters from their wives, and hence "thousands of husbands discharged themselves" to save their families over the course of the war.

Despite the Confederacy's strength in cotton production, it produced very little cloth or clothing, and by the end of the first year, its most productive textile manufacturing regions were in the hands of the Union. Instead, the South increasingly relied on foreign sources.