North Carolina Rice
http://www.nchistoricsites.org/brunswic/Plantations-Cape-Fear.jpg
A crop that not many people may associate with North Carolina, that had a profitable time, is rice. Rice was a crop that came from Africa to North Carolina in the late 1600's. Rice was a well known crop of the world at this time, but was a very difficult crop to work in the fields and required a number of field workers or slaves in the 1600 and 1700's. According to the book, The Way We Lived in North Carolina(2003), ""The best Land for Rice," wrote a South Carolinian in 1761, "is a wet, deep, miry soil; such as is generally to be found in Cypress Swamps; or a black greasy mould with a Clay Foundation."(Fenn, Wood, Watson, Clatyon, Nathans, Parramore & Anderson, p.66). Rice was an interesting crop because it was not a native crop to the Americas. However, it made a strong presence near Cape Fear in North Carolina. Although rice was profitable it soon declined and ended. One factor in the decline was the freeing of slaves, which was the cheap labor needed to work the fields. Also according to Towery (1984), "The final end to large-scale commercial rice production in North Carolina came in the late 1800s, when a series of large hurricanes damaged the old rice fields beyond repair. The state’s growers gave up. That ended not only one of North Carolina’s oldest farming traditions, but also one of the largest African contributions to North Carolina agriculture." Rice was a crop brought over from the Old World and became cultivated in the New World. It was a hard crop to grow however, its influence in Cape Fear, North Carolina can still seen today with large plantation homes spread throughout the area.