cotton belt
Dixie's fiber region
The cotton belt is the region of the American South where cotton was historically the dominant crop, stretching from the Carolinas through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and into Texas.
The term evokes the antebellum plantation economy and its legacy: Her family had farmed in the cotton belt for generations.
Today it refers loosely to areas where cotton remains a significant crop.
- cash cropProduce grown for sale
- antebellum SouthPre-1861 slave states
- sharecroppingFarm rent in produce
- boll weevilBeetle infesting cotton plants
- Mississippi DeltaRiver's fan-shaped lowland
monoculture · white gold · textile mills · soil fertility · slavery · Jim Crow laws · tenant farming · rural poverty · plantation · field hands · agricultural labor · export markets · Tennessee Valley · loamy soil · Texas Panhandle · Deep South · summer heat · Gulf Coast
- farmlandfarms, farm, fields, field, barns
- Regional Productswine regions, coffee regions, bourbon, tequila, champagne
- cottonboll, cottonseed, fiber, gin, ginning
- cotton textilesginning, yarn, fabric, cloth, muslin
- Black BeltAlabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina
- countrysidefarmhouse, farm, barns, farmyard, barn
cotton beltRust Belt
Post-industrial American heartland
Silicon Valley · industrial heartland · corn belt · wheat belt · Sun Belt
cotton beltwheat belt
Cereal-crop-dominant farming zone
corn belt · grain belt · fruit belt · tundra · boreal forest