258 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SLTRVEY I3TH ANNUAL REPORT 



AGRICULTURE 



CONDITIONS PREVIOUS TO 1 887 



Although farming has long been one of the most important in- 

 dustries in central Florida, as in most other parts of the United 

 States, it has had its greatest development only in the last few dec- 

 ades. In 1850, when the number and acreage of farms was first re- 

 turned by the census, there were only about 600 farms in our whole 

 area, and over half of them were in Marion County, presumably in 

 the hammock belt, which has the richest soil. Only a little over one 

 per cent of the whole area was in farms, and one-fifth of that im- 

 proved, making 2.66 improved acres per inhabitant, which would 

 hardly be enough to feed the population if they depended entirely 

 on field and garden crops for their sustenance. As there were 

 no railroads in peninsular Florida then it is not likely that any ap- 

 preciable quantity of food was imported, but fish and oysters con- 

 tributed something to the larder of people living near the coast, and 

 in the interior grazing cattle and hogs in the pine woods seems to 

 have yielded more revenue than tilling the soil. Large plantations 

 worked with slave labor, such as were common in other southern 

 states, were almost unknown here, except for a few in the ham- 

 mock belt north of Ocala. 



In the next ten years the number and average size of farms 

 nearly doubled. Marion County still had the lion's share of the 

 farm land and buildings, but considerably less than half the total 

 number of farms and live-stock, showing that the farmers in other 

 counties depended more on meat than on vegetables. The develop- 

 ment of agriculture in central Florida as a whole from 1850 to 

 1880 is shown in Table 28, but the regions cannot very well be 

 separated on account of the large size of the counties in those days, 

 as already explained. 



The number of farms more than doubled between i860 and 

 1870, but their average size decreased, doubtless because the Civil 

 War made many former slaves farm proprietors, and their hold- 

 ings were naturally smaller than those of the whites. The amount 

 of improved land fell off between 1870 and 1880, but outside of 

 Marion County there w'as an increase, which would seem to in- 

 dicate that the rich hammock lands were becoming impoverished 



