Figure 9. — More than 500,000 acres of abandoned fields, some badly eroded, were reported by the Forest Survey in South Carolina, Almost 



half the area was on the piedmont. 



from constant cropping. On the steeper slopes and 

 rolling lands of the piedmont, lack of adequate ter- 

 racing, failure to use close-growing crops, and the 

 custom of letting land lie idle without proper vege- 

 tative cover, frequently resulted in such serious 

 erosion that cultivation was no longer practicable 

 (fig. 9). 



Agricultural specialization started in the Colonial 

 period with rice and indigo, which were raised in 

 the low country of the Coastal Plain. The inven- 

 tion of the cotton gin at the end of the eighteenth 

 century soon made cotton farming profitable in most 

 of South Carolina. Indeed, cotton became the 

 chief money crop (fig. 10) and its widespread pro- 

 duction led to further clearing of the forest. Con- 

 siderable areas were eventually abandoned, however, 

 because of soil impoverishment and erosion and 

 these rapidly reverted to forest. Thus, in spite of a 

 fairly dense population and the fact that a small 

 amount of virgin timber remains, over half of South 

 Carolina's 19.4 million acres is even now covered 

 with forest. 



In 1940, according to the U. S. Census of Agricul- 

 ture, the State had 137,558 farms, which occupied 



57 percent of the land area and were valued at nearly 

 ?338, 500,000. The area in woodland on the average 

 farm was 41 acres in the 26 counties that were more 

 than half forested and 29 acres in the 20 less forested 

 counties. In contrast, the average areas of crop- 

 land were 29 acres per farm in the more forested, 35 

 acres in the less forested counties. There was little 

 difference between the two groups of counties in the 

 size of the average farm — 83 acres in the more and 

 80 acres in the less forested counties. Figure 11 

 shows the percent of the total land area, by counties, 

 that was producing agricultural crops in 1939, ac- 

 cording to the U. S. Census of Agriculture. 



Cotton and corn are South Carolina's principal 

 farm crops. For many years cotton led in acreage, 

 occupying 42 percent of the improved farm land in 

 1909 and 1919, and 37 percent of the land available 

 for crops in 1929; but in 1939 the cotton-producing 

 area fell to 21 percent while the corn-producing area 

 rose to 32 percent of the available cropland (P, 10, 

 11, 12). In 1939 cotton was raised on 81 percent and 

 corn on 95 percent of South Carolina's farms. Other 

 important crops are small grains, hay, and tobacco, 

 in the order named, though tobacco was produced 



10 



