Journal article
We Need New Farmers, New Plans, New Ways of Farming: The Southern Immigration Movement and Agricultural Reform
Agricultural history, Vol.100(3), pp.408-441
08/01/2026
DOI: 10.1215/00021482-12440574
Abstract
Frustrated with the slow pace of improvement in their region, many white New South agricultural reformers looked for a scapegoat. They found one in the Black tenant farmer, whom they blamed for the Cotton Belt's failure to diversify production and adopt intensive, scientific methods. This article explores white reformers’ main ideas for replacing the so-called Negro tenant system. Many of them called for supplanting the Black tenantry with white yeoman farmers. This idea was especially popular among the supporters of the Southern Immigration Movement, a loosely coordinated effort to bring European immigrants to the region. Southern immigration advocates argued that European immigrants’ expertise in mixed farming and intensive methods made them the obvious choice to reform Southern agriculture. These immigration supporters urged landowners to divide their holdings and sell them to a new class of European smallholders who could help bring scientific farming to the Cotton Belt.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- We Need New Farmers, New Plans, New Ways of Farming: The Southern Immigration Movement and Agricultural Reform
- Creators
- Bluford Adams - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Agricultural history, Vol.100(3), pp.408-441
- DOI
- 10.1215/00021482-12440574
- ISSN
- 0002-1482
- eISSN
- 1533-8290
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 08/01/2026
- Academic Unit
- English; American Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9985218632502771
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