Lower Missouri Valley
More actions
| Lower Missouri Valley | |
|---|---|
| No longer grownGrowing ended in 1890 | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Midwestern United States |
| Geography | |
| Country | United States |
| Province/State | Missouri |
| Coordinates | 39.23, -93.44 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 21,500 km² |
| Terrain | Approximately fourteen counties on the Missouri River in Missouri, from Andrew and Buchanan in the north-west to Callaway in the east |
| Growing history | |
| Grown | 1835[2]: 292–1890[1]: 84 |
| Why it stopped | No longer profitable |
| Earlier names | Missouri River Valley; the river counties |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
The Lower Missouri Valley is a former hemp growing area in the state of Missouri, United States, in the Midwestern United States growing region. It covers the counties along the Missouri River where hemp was grown for fibre from the 1830s until about 1890. The principal producing counties throughout that time were Buchanan, Clay, Howard, Lafayette, Platte and Saline, in the west-central part of the state.[1]: 66 Lyster H. Dewey of the United States Department of Agriculture dated the first hemp grown in Missouri to about 1835 and the abandonment of the industry to about 1890.[2]: 292–293
The tract
Miles W. Eaton, who wrote the history of the industry in 1938, found that hemp in Missouri was confined in a general way to the Missouri River valley and to some counties on the Mississippi north of St. Louis.[1]: 66 Platte County, in the territory added to the state in 1837, became one of the leading producers. By the mid-1840s the crop had spread to the counties next to the first growers: Andrew, Carroll, Chariton, Jackson and Ray.[1]: 67–68 In 1850 the hemp counties on the river included Boone, Callaway, Chariton, Clay, Cooper, Howard, Lafayette and Saline.[1]: 76
The area is drawn on those fourteen counties, which run along the Missouri from Andrew and Buchanan, around St. Joseph, down through Platte, Clay, Jackson and Ray, past Lafayette and Carroll, to Saline, Chariton, Howard, Cooper, Boone and Callaway. It covers about 21,500 km². By 1850 several counties well away from the river also grew hemp, in small amounts.[1]: 68 Those counties and the Mississippi counties are not drawn.
Cultivation and trade
Missouri produced 1,600 tons of hemp in 1840 and 12,500 tons in 1844, according to Dewey, and was then expected to overtake Kentucky.[2]: 292 The federal census of 1850 counted 16,028 tons of hemp in the state. Platte County produced 4,345 tons, Lafayette 2,462, Buchanan 1,894, Saline 1,559, Clay 1,274 and Howard 904. All but sixty tons of the state's crop were dew-retted on the ground rather than retted in water.[1]: 74 In Lafayette, by Eaton's account, farmers grew so much hemp that they had to bring in grain and meat from neighbouring counties.[1]: 76
The census of 1860 recorded the largest crop in the state's history, 19,267 tons. Saline led with 3,920 tons of dew-retted hemp, ahead of Lafayette, Platte and Buchanan.[1]: 80–81 Warehouses at the river towns and landings stored, baled and shipped the crop for the farmers, and merchants advanced cash on hemp shipped to St. Louis and to eastern and southern markets; a dealer at Fayette bought baled hemp delivered at the landings of Glasgow, Bluffport, Franklin and Rocheport.[1]: 37, 42–43 Most of it went into rough fabrics, the bagging and bale rope used to pack cotton.[1]: 87–88
The work was done by hand. Enslaved people cut and broke the hemp. Much of the crop was in the hands of the wealthier farmers, most of whom, by the opinion Eaton reports, had come from the Southern states.[1]: 85–86 Inventors tried to build machines to cut and break it, but growers complained that none replaced hand labour, and in 1855 a farm journal held that the crop had reached the limit of what manual labour could handle.[1]: 82, 88
Decline
Eaton traced the decline to the Civil War. The war cut Missouri off from the cotton states that bought its bagging and rope, and after it the abolition of slavery took away the labour the crop had depended on; with no machine to replace that labour, hemp ceased to be a profitable crop. Iron ties and wire then replaced bagging and rope for packing cotton, and grain and livestock paid better.[1]: 87–90 Dewey put the end down to the poor methods of cleaning the fibre on hand brakes and the cost of carrying it to the eastern markets, which made hemp less profitable than other crops.[2]: 293
The census gave Missouri 2,816 tons in 1870, 209 tons in 1880 and 31 tons in 1890; Lafayette and Saline were still the largest producers in 1870.[1]: 83–84, 89, 91 Eaton found no hemp recorded in the state after 1890 and none grown for commercial purposes in 1938.[1]: 84, 91 In 1913 Dewey wrote that hemp was "abundant as a wild plant in many localities in western Missouri".[2]: 294
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No news items are recorded for this growing area yet.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 Eaton, Miles W. (1938). A history of the hemp industry in Missouri (MA thesis). University of Missouri. doi:10.32469/10355/102662.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Dewey, Lyster H. (1914). "Hemp". Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture 1913. Washington: Government Printing Office. pp. 283–346.