SPECIALIZED REGION The Cotton Belt of the American South is thus one of the most highly specialized agricultural regions in the world. It contains about 295,000,000 acres, nearly one-sixth of the land area of the continental United States, extends 1600 miles in length, and averages 300 miles in breadth. In this area are 2,100,000 farms, one-third of the number in the United which produced in 1919 crops valued at $3,800,000,000, one-fourth of the total farm income of the United In this belt 42 per cent of the crop . land was in cotton in 1919, and the value of the cotton crop was equal to the value of all other crops in the Belt combined.' As a matter of course cotton occupies the best land in the Belt, and the time devoted to other crops is determined by the demands of the cash crop. The value of cotton lint is exceeded by the value of corn, hay, and wheat crops for the whole United States, but when the value of cotton seed is included cotton ranks second only to corn.' In our export trade the value of cotton far ex
ceeds that of any other commodity.' "It is the chief and often almost the only source of income to a large propor tion of the farmers in the Southern States." 7 The Cotton Belt is not one but many. Within this area differences in climate, rainfall, altitude, character of the soil, and history have given rise to subregions of cotton culture. These regions differ rather widely in the spatial distribution of what may be called human factors—black men, white men, share croppers, share tenants, small own ers, and planters. Any adequate analysis of these regions would include the distribution in terms of regions, of population, races, types of tenure, domestic animals, cities, buildings, and machines devoted to cotton culture. This description of spatial distribution of man and the artifacts of his civilization in relation to cotton lands is, I take it, the human ecology of the Cotton Belt.