LAND TENURE AND PLANTATION ORGANIZATION 
53 
land. Excepting the forest products and the pasturing of a limited 
number of cattle, unimproved land is largely not utilized. Such lands 
are more often not drained, or are held for expansion of the culti- 
vated area. A comparison of cultivated and noncultivated land in 
the several types of plantations is shown in Figure 15. The crop- 
ping system on the plantation as a whole depends upon the character 
of labor employed and other factors which are enumerated later. 
On 161 cotton plantations (254,508 acres) 59.6 per cent of the culti- 
vated acreage was in cotton, 27.7 per cent in corn, and 12.7 per cent 
in crops other than cotton and corn, as shown by Table 16. The 
proportion of cultivated acreage in cotton was higher in Texas (75.7 
per cent) and the Mississippi Valley (71.1 per cent) than anywhere 
else, because of special adaptability of soil and climate to cotton 
Percentage of Land in Cultivation in Selected Plantations, 1920 
PER CENT 
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 
COTTON 
405,435 ACRES 
SUGAR CANE 
47.495 ACRES 
RICE 
102,852 ACRES 
SHADE TOBACCO 
10.254 ACRES 
Fig. 15. — This chart shows the percentage of cultivated land in cotton, sugar cane, rice, and "shade" 
tobacco plantations. The unimproved land is often held for expansion of cultivated area, but in some 
cases it is utilized for livestock production. In the rice area the system of occasionally "resting" the 
land accounts for the larger percentage of rice land not in cultivation. Such land during the "rest" 
period is used by the owner or leased for grazing purposes. 
production. The cotton acreage in the Alabama-Mississippi Black 
Belt and in Georgia was less than the average, due doubtless to the 
recent ravages of the boll weevil and the special adaptability of these 
sections to certain other crops. 
Table 16, — Crop-ping systems on 207 -plantations selected for special study, 1920 
I. Cotton (161 Plantations) 
Culti- 
vated 
acres 
Crops 
Plantation areas 
Cotton 
Corn 
Other 
crops 
Texas-Arkansas ..---. . . 
75, 894 
17, 223 
44, 605 
10, 363 
29, 276 
52, 943 
24, 204 
Per cent 
lb. 7 
58.6 
71.1 
51.3 
45.7 
39.0 
53.6 
Per cent 
18.9 
33.7 
23.1 
35.9 
40.2 
35.7 
23.9 
Per cent 
5.4 
7.7 
5 8 
12 8 
Alabama-Mississippi. . .. . ... .. 
14.1 
Georgia . . ...... ... .. .. 
25.3 
North Carolina-South Carolina 
22.5 
254, 508 
59.6 
27.7 
12 7 
