No, you've been giving the indication that the areas that were the least self-sufficient were self-sufficient. As for provability, the 1860 self-sufficiency claim falls flat and lacks proof. The links you posted don't offer evidence of what you claim, particularly the Gavin Wright one which seems to go off on a long tangent about crop ratios that don't even address the most basic question about what a sufficiency would be. In several cases the links you gave seem to disprove his assertions. Not sure what the Hilliard comment is about, haven't seen that one.
My methods are provable (or if incorrect, at least partially disprovable) but at present I don't have the additional data/information to do so. I suspect it is out there, but I'm not familiar with the data sources that should be searched. On the other hand, the export data should be solid and provide a very strong indication as there is the initial condition, then a change, then a return to the prior condition with a large response to each change. It's a good screening test, but it takes more information about the whole system to flesh it out and prove the hypothesis. There are some corroborating known conditions that I've pointed out.
At this stage I'll need to see some good, solid, well-presented evidence to agree with the 1860 Southern self-sufficiency claim.
I'm trying to decide which book to get on the subject. It seems from the reviews I've read much data just isn't there and the authors make many assumptions. At this point it'll probably be Sam Hilliard's, Hog Meat and Hoe Cakes: Food Supply in the Old South 1840-1860, not so much for his conclusions but for his research and sources. I can draw my own conclusions.
Here's a middle of the road review of his book:
Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860. By Sam Bowers Hilliard. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972.
Sam Hilliard's book focuses on late antebellum foodstuffs in relation to the Southern United States economy. More specifically, Hilliard brings into question the idea of the South as strictly a cash-crop economy, wholly dependent on other regions of the United States for its food. Rather than reinforce this dependent status, Hilliard argues for southern self-sufficiency, evidencing his conclusions with census data, travel accounts, and the like. Hilliard ultimately provides a compelling argument for a Southern society that, in addition to cash crops, produced and raised crops and livestock for their own sustenance.
Hilliard begins his study by describing the Southern diet. According to the author, the antebellum South provided a variety of foods for Southerners including beef, wheat products, sweet potatoes, rice, turkey, and fish. Southerners consumed pork most often, but Hilliard provides evidence supporting consumption of other meats like turkey, chicken, and even squirrel and opossum. The variety found in southern diets was limited to white southerners—slaves consumed pork rations more than any other meat primarily due to the abundance of swine in the South and slaves' lack of firearms necessary for hunting other animals for food. Southerners also included in their diets fruits like strawberries and peaches that they preserved through canning. Settlements near the sea provided seafood including catfish and oysters, but such foods were limited to ports, and were not often found in inland cities.
The second part of Hilliard's study focuses on the ways in which Southerners acquired the foods they included in their diet. Hilliard argues that the South devoted some effort to maintaining regional foodstuff production. The large consumption of pork, for instance, suggests that Southerners raised swine for consumption. According to the author, swine provided the South with a stable supply of meat. Unlike cattle and sheep, pigs have a high reproduction rate, ensuring Southern farmers a number of pigs for slaughter. Pigs were also relatively easy to care for, and southerners utilized corn—a crop in fairly high rate of production in the South—to feed and fatten the animals. Interestingly, Hilliard finds that where the market for pigs in the South was the greatest, the number of pigs in the region tended to be fewer than at other Southern cities. Hilliard concludes that these pig markets attracted swine trade from other parts of the South, suggesting an intra-regional swine market.
Hilliard demonstrates Southern self-sufficiency as well through beef markets. According to the author, Southern farmers and plantation owners did, indeed, raise cattle for food, milk, and farm production labor (or oxen to pull the ploughs). Southern cattle were not as healthy as cattle raised in Northern regions of the United States. Because beef assumed a secondary status in Southern diets, Southerners imported fewer cattle from the Northwest than they produced for their own use in the South.
Hilliard demonstrates that, consistently, Southern use of pork, cattle, and other foods such as corn (a crop particularly acclimated to the more tropical climates of the South) exceeded interregional trade suggesting that Southerners did, indeed, raise and grow their own food. Certainly, Hilliard acknowledges that the South did import foods from other regions of the United States, and the author emphasizes that food production never became a major industry because of more lucrative cash crop markets like cotton.
The author's argument is compelling, and Hilliard's numbers, including the number of swine and cattle per capita in the South as well as the bushels of corn and wheat Southerners consumed, points to an effort made by southerners to supply themselves with foods they included in their diets. One weakness in Hilliard's argument lies in the author's use of the term "self-sufficient." While Hilliard demonstrates that not all livestock and produce were imported from the Northwest, the author does show that trade did occur between different regions in the United States. Therefore, rather than insisting on a self-sufficient Southern food economy, the author would have been better served to suggest a Southern economy working in conjunction with other regional markets. "Self-sufficiency" implies independence, and the Southern food market was not wholly independent. Nonetheless, Hilliard does make a strong argument for Southern production outside of cash crops.
Sara Crowley
Bringing the