Case Study Of From Poultry Farming By Monica Gisolf
Monica Gisolfi's “From Crop Lien to Contract Farming...” uses a case study of Upcountry County, Georgia to examine how poultry farming replaced cotton as the mono-crop of the South. Like sharecropping, it put farmers in debt by putting the bulk of burden and cost on the worker. According to Gisolfi, a major problem with “King Cotton” was the crop lien and the related sharecropping and tenant farming practices. In spite of farmer expectations, the poultry industry failed to solve these issues, instead it created a far more expensive system of debt and top down profiteering. Her article is spent outlining the parallels between the two and concludes with a dismal portrait of the current poultry industry: a skewed ratio of few benefactors reaping
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In the late 1910s values began to drop and by the time Depression struck it was an essentially worthless commodityi. In response, the Agriculture Adjustment Administration paid growers to stop growing itii. The payouts were readily accepted by landowning elite1 who opportunistically allocated “practically all” of the AAA money to themselves rather than the intended benefactors2 iii. Unfortunately, though not unpredictably, the planters also rejected additional relief, notably food, for the impoverished and hungry tenants and sharecroppers.iv Empty handed, the second-class residents either left the farms or remained, demoted to mere wage …show more content…
Prior to the explosion of hard money poultry markets, an economy for chicken and eggs already existed – rooted in barter and commodity exchange. It was common that women and children supplemented family incomes in their care of “yard flocks”xii. In addition to providing a homegrown meat source, the chicken also provided eggs which alongside the birds themselves were “'accepted form of currency'”xiii that some women used as “'pin money'”.xiv But as chicken gained commercial viability, those alternate incomes were claimed as part of family gains (read under male discretion). The introduction of male oversightxv and commercial viability also tweaked the language, re-branding chicken to the elevated status “poultry”
In the late 1910s values began to drop and by the time Depression struck it was an essentially worthless commodityi. In response, the Agriculture Adjustment Administration paid growers to stop growing itii. The payouts were readily accepted by landowning elite1 who opportunistically allocated “practically all” of the AAA money to themselves rather than the intended benefactors2 iii. Unfortunately, though not unpredictably, the planters also rejected additional relief, notably food, for the impoverished and hungry tenants and sharecroppers.iv Empty handed, the second-class residents either left the farms or remained, demoted to mere wage …show more content…
Prior to the explosion of hard money poultry markets, an economy for chicken and eggs already existed – rooted in barter and commodity exchange. It was common that women and children supplemented family incomes in their care of “yard flocks”xii. In addition to providing a homegrown meat source, the chicken also provided eggs which alongside the birds themselves were “'accepted form of currency'”xiii that some women used as “'pin money'”.xiv But as chicken gained commercial viability, those alternate incomes were claimed as part of family gains (read under male discretion). The introduction of male oversightxv and commercial viability also tweaked the language, re-branding chicken to the elevated status “poultry”