Soybeans in the Lower Mississippi Valley

NE of the more striking changes in the agricultural geography of the lower Mississippi valley during the past 20 years has been rapid increases in soybean cultivation. During the past decade the soybean has become a major cash crop in the lower Mississippi region. The valley now ranks as the second largest soybean producing district in the nation, though not nearly so large a producer as the Illinois-Indiana-Ohio region. While increments in soybeans planted and harvested in this region are phases of the rise of the soybean in many segments of United States agriculture, they are especially noteworthy here because of the rapidity of their occurrence, their present volume, and the economic conditions and land occupance practices which engendered them. In 1939, Illinois supported 2,647,000 acres planted to soybeans and produced 44,772,000 bushels. In the same year, the tri-state district surrounding the panhandle of Southeastern Missouri and including portions of Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Tennessee, contained 960,351 acres planted to soybeans and produced 888,894 bushels (Fig. 1). By 1944 Illinois production of the bean had increased to 3,832,646 acres grown, and a harvest of 73,335,737 bushels. In the same year, however, soybean production in the tri-state district occupied 962,934 acres (or virtually the same acreage in 1939) but the harvest had increased more than 900 per cent, to 8,075,579 bushels. (This figure includes only those areas indicated on Figure 1 with more than 15 per cent of cropland harvested planted to soybeans.) The largest producing district in both volume harvested and acreage planted is, of course, the east-central Illinois-central Indiana-western Ohio district and the

Agricultural economics · Economics · Geography · History · Soybean genetics and cultivation

• Federal Agriculture Policy and Rural America

  Open Access•Karl Raitz•Antipode•1975

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