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FOLLOWING THE CIVIL WAR ARKANSAS partook of a new agricultural enterprise emerging in the United States-the production of fresh vegetables and small fruits for primary consumption in the year-round urban markets of the nation. Because of their annual production cycle and seasonal export to distant markets, these crops should not be confused with either orchard crops, which required long-term investment, or with the products of market gardening raised for sale in local markets. Truck farming, as this new enterprise was known, was in part a product of the industrial revolution, which produced the transportation system and the markets necessary for the movement and sale of crops. In the years following 1865, a fast and efficient national railway system developed, enabling the successful transport of perishable fruits and vegetables over long distances. Growing urban populations provided the markets. During the single generation between 1860 and 1890, the urban population of the United States more than tripled from 6.2 million to 22.1 million.1 Concurrently with this development, a shift in dietary habits also encouraged truck crop production. After the Civil War the inhabitants of cities began to consume an increasing quantity of small fruits and vegetables.2
Southern agricultural producers responded to this accelerating consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Their attention was drawn to truck crops by more than increased demand and the greater ease of transport offered by railroads, however. Declining prices for cotton also provided an incentive for change. From the mid-1870s to the late 1890s, southern cotton farmers experienced a disastrous drop in price from an average of nearly eleven cents a pound to just under six cents a pound.3 The new and expanding urban market for fresh vegetables and small fruits thus attracted farmers throughout the South. In 1883 a Mississippian reminisced that "apprehensive of poverty [in 1875] if [I] continued cotton planting [,] I concluded to experiment with peas, and ordered a bushel of seed."4
King Cotton found himself competing with the likes of King Strawberry, King Spud, King Lettuce, King Cabbage, and King Celery.5 The agricultural census of 1900 suggests the extent of turn-of-the-century southern participation in truck farming. The southern contribution to the national production of small fruits and vegetables was 130,918 acres out of 667,150 or nearly 20 percent.6...