I need to look at more recent figures, but I’m pretty sure this is in part a result of cheap Chinese agri equipment making it easier for global south countries to grow their own. Let’s not forget that American cash crop exports have been a key lever in imperialist extraction over the last 80 years or so
cash crops are specifically not eaten as food though, that what makes growing a shitload of cash crops a bad idea and a cause for famine
If the wheat were 100% being used for shit like biodiesel it would be a cash crop, but it’s not
If “wheat is a cash crop” were true the same would be true for rice and at that point the phrase is literally meaningless because it offers no meaningful distinction
Edit: the lying machine agrees with you but i disagree, it thinks the distinguishing factor is whether or not it’s subsistence agriculture and I disagree because that doesn’t fucking matter lol a cash crop isn’t just “a crop that is grown for money” it’s a crop which only has trade value for money. Otherwise every bit of excess a subsistence farmer grows and sells magically becomes “a cash crop” and there’s no distinction between the end-use of what is being grown, which is what matters. Farmers planting a bunch of wheat that ends up being sold aren’t “relying on cash crops” in the same way as cotton or tobacco farmers are.
No, you people just don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Under your definition literally any crop grown and sold is a cash crop, but that isn’t true. You’re the ones offering a muddier, useless definition, defining literally any crop ever sold as a cash crop. Rice isn’t a fucking cash crop. If you’ve ever heard it being defined as a cash crop, you’re being fucking lied to. It’s a staple food produced primarily to fucking feed people, and it doesn’t just magically stop being that just because you produce an extra pound of it and sell that shit to someone else. The commodification and sale of a fucking crop is not what makes it a fucking cash crop!
I have literally never my fucking life heard “Cash crops” to refer to anything other than shit like tobacco, cotton, corn for biofuel, etc., you people are just straight up fucked to death wrong here.
What’s really fucking ironic is lol I’m pretty sure that this exact thing, American wheat sold for imperialist purposes, is intended to force reliance on american food imports so that other countries have to have comparatively higher proportions of cash crops instead, feeding the west raw materials while increasing precarity for the developing world
You know why they’re in greater precarity? Because they’re GROWING CASH CROPS, and the U.S. can TURN OFF ITS EXPORTS, which matter BECAUSE THEY’RE EXPORTING STAPLE FOODS AND NOT FUCKING CASH CROPS
Stop fucking bothering me over shit you’re this wrong about
Just catching up but I wanted to chime in that I agree with you on this one. Or at least, my exposure to the term in the past matches yours.
It’s certainly not useful in modern industrial agriculture where every crop is being sold for market. Wikipedia says the term is used to differentiates from a “staple crop” i.e. what a farmer grows to eat for themselves. But staple crop redirects to “staple food” all of which are grown as commoditiescash crops so it’s an inconsistent mess.
If you accept capitalism/wealth extraction is the natural state of the world, I’m sure calling it a cash crop starts to look like a meaningless distinction. (I’m not saying you do, but I also won’t say you don’t given the context)
I believe it’s worth noting that the mode of agricultural production that gives us wheat as a mass export commodity (often used as a tool for imperialist leverage against colonised peoples) does so for the sake of profit and not to feed humans.
It’s still not a cash crop though, you’re never goingto have a shitload of farmers growing wheat going OH NO WE OVER LEVERAGED INTO CASH CROPS AND NOW THERES A FAMINE
That’s also not the Irish famine though.
Irish peasants grew potatoes because it was more or less the only thing nutrient dense enough to sustain them, due to ever decreasing lot-sizes. Then potato blight + English landlords forcing continued export of food, despite an ongoing famine.
Arguing that someone is willing to pay for food, thus all crops are cash crops is like arguing capitalism has been around forever because people traded in the middle ages
No don’t you understand, potatoes are just a cash crop because they were sold for cash! I blocked the guy
Arguing that someone is willing to pay for food, thus all crops are cash crops is like arguing capitalism has been around forever because people traded in the middle ages
fucking exactly, this definition of cash crop literally would define any surplus of any crop as a cash crop. Your farm produces enough rice to sell? Ah you’re growing cash crops!! I’m getting angry that i even need to argue this
Irish tenant farmers grew potatoes as a subsistence crop, while the wealthy landlords grew wheat and oats as a cash crop to export. It is in fact a great illustration how growing food by itself will not stave off a famine when the social relation demands that thousands must starve for a few to get even wealthier.
Re: your last point, I have been careful not to blame capitalism specifically in this thread. Wheat was grown as a cash crop in Ancient Rome. The development of the slaver latifundia system leading to the economic marginalisation of the plebeians was a major source of class conflict in their society.
Potatoes were the subsistence crop you smug ignorant dipshit. The landlords exported tons of and tons of wheat, barley and oats as cash crops even as thousands died from a preventable famine.
Go read my initial comment and tell me why might someone want to center the profit motive for crop production when discussing colonisation and global food security on a communist forum. It’s almost as if who owns the land and who chooses what to grow and where to send it has some bearing on the topic.
But no, you misunderstood a term and when corrected had to make it an entire thing instead of just learning and moving on. Also, miss me with the cope about AI hallucinations telling you you’re wrong. Maybe switch off the Forest Burninator 5000 and go look up a static resource to find out this is a term with decades of established use.
BTW the distinction you’re thinking of is food crops vs industrial crops.
there is no need to get confused about it, a cash crop is just the literal definition of a commodity. a thing produced with the explicit purpose of being sold.
Yes. “We grow food for profit” is a simple statement but absolutely not a neutral one. I feel like I really shouldn’t have to explain this on lemmygrad of all places.
Cash Crop is kind of a meaningless distinction, but the way farmers use the term is to separate the portion of their field/harvest not by type or species but what their plan for that chunk of the field is, come harvest time.
There are farmers near me that designate about 10-20% of their soybean or wheat yield as Personal or Subsistence Crop to feed to their family and livestock, and then the other 80-90% of that is Cash Crop.
The colloquial use of the term Cash Crop has entered the public consciousness incorrectly, and the argument here is basically the same as when people misunderstand the definition of the word Theory. There’s a breakdown between the specific scientific use as a format for an explanation distinct from a Law, and the colloquial use which just means an idea.
Why did that happen? Because in many places of the world and at different times, farmers were forced to designate most or all of their yield to be sold or to choose which crops they plant based entirely on sale price to the detriment of their ability to grow their personal subsistence crops. That concept is what entered the public consciousness, and I think that’s the problem here.
I will never agree with another definition for cash crops, cash crops are crops whose only utility is to be sold for cash and that’s an inherent property of the actual thing being farmed. Defining all commodified crops as cash crops also muddles analysis of things like what’s going on with this wheat (sold to Africa cheap, African farmers can’t compete on staple foods, and consequently choose to grow other crops i.e. cotton or soy for sale. One definition has both U.S. and African producers growing “cash crops” but that ignores that one being a staple food product, the ones relying on the import of that have overwhelming dependency on that continued import to not starve)
Also like things like tobacco and cotton, you can’t subsist on them at all. They only have purpose as raw materials to be sold. That’s what makes them inherently cash crops. I will never agree with another definition, I’ll just say the other person is wrong. If farmers are using the wrong definition then that’s fine, they can be wrong too
Marxism is an eternal method, an immortal science if you will, which seeks to explain the world accurately. Part of science is refining our beliefs and methods when we discover more accurate information, so part of being a good Marxist is learning to accept when we are wrong about things in healthy ways and to grow from that experience.
I would consider those cash crops yeah because those are the intended purposes and a lot of it can’t even be used for human consumption even if you wanted to. Wheat has industrial uses (literally everything does) but I’ve never heard of it being grown on anywhere near the scale of those for those purposes
Anyway Google’s lying machine says i’m wrong but i still disagree
Every now and then i feel like the entire world retcons some bit of language into some absolute fucking nonsense and this is one of those times. A cash crop isn’t a cash crop just because it’s sold for fucking money, it’s a cash crop if being sold for money is all it’s fucking good for!
The commodity is, first of all, an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind. The nature of these needs, whether they arise, for example, from the stomach, or the imagination, makes no difference. Nor does it matter here how the thing satisfies man’s need, whether directly as a means of subsistence, i.e. an object of consumption, or indirectly as a means of production.
all crops that are sown to be sold on the market are commodities, wrongly named cash crops.
While I’ll concede that commodity better captures the social relation, I disagree that cash crop is somehow the wrong name. In the context of my initial comment it worked well enough, I thought.
In any case, I’m gonna drop this, we’ve gotten way past constructive discourse here. I did appreciate your contributions though.
I need to look at more recent figures, but I’m pretty sure this is in part a result of cheap Chinese agri equipment making it easier for global south countries to grow their own. Let’s not forget that American cash crop exports have been a key lever in imperialist extraction over the last 80 years or so
I don’t think wheat is considered a cash crop, i think it’s the opposite of cash crop when you grow staple foods
Wheat is absolutely a cash crop
cash crops are specifically not eaten as food though, that what makes growing a shitload of cash crops a bad idea and a cause for famine
If the wheat were 100% being used for shit like biodiesel it would be a cash crop, but it’s not
If “wheat is a cash crop” were true the same would be true for rice and at that point the phrase is literally meaningless because it offers no meaningful distinction
Edit: the lying machine agrees with you but i disagree, it thinks the distinguishing factor is whether or not it’s subsistence agriculture and I disagree because that doesn’t fucking matter lol a cash crop isn’t just “a crop that is grown for money” it’s a crop which only has trade value for money. Otherwise every bit of excess a subsistence farmer grows and sells magically becomes “a cash crop” and there’s no distinction between the end-use of what is being grown, which is what matters. Farmers planting a bunch of wheat that ends up being sold aren’t “relying on cash crops” in the same way as cotton or tobacco farmers are.
A cash crop is any crop grown to sell for cash to a (foreign) market, not “non-edible” crops.
No it isn’t
It literally is. You’ve invented a fake definition.
No, you people just don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Under your definition literally any crop grown and sold is a cash crop, but that isn’t true. You’re the ones offering a muddier, useless definition, defining literally any crop ever sold as a cash crop. Rice isn’t a fucking cash crop. If you’ve ever heard it being defined as a cash crop, you’re being fucking lied to. It’s a staple food produced primarily to fucking feed people, and it doesn’t just magically stop being that just because you produce an extra pound of it and sell that shit to someone else. The commodification and sale of a fucking crop is not what makes it a fucking cash crop!
I have literally never my fucking life heard “Cash crops” to refer to anything other than shit like tobacco, cotton, corn for biofuel, etc., you people are just straight up fucked to death wrong here.
What’s really fucking ironic is lol I’m pretty sure that this exact thing, American wheat sold for imperialist purposes, is intended to force reliance on american food imports so that other countries have to have comparatively higher proportions of cash crops instead, feeding the west raw materials while increasing precarity for the developing world
You know why they’re in greater precarity? Because they’re GROWING CASH CROPS, and the U.S. can TURN OFF ITS EXPORTS, which matter BECAUSE THEY’RE EXPORTING STAPLE FOODS AND NOT FUCKING CASH CROPS
Stop fucking bothering me over shit you’re this wrong about
Find a single source using your definition and not mine/ours.
Just catching up but I wanted to chime in that I agree with you on this one. Or at least, my exposure to the term in the past matches yours.
It’s certainly not useful in modern industrial agriculture where every crop is being sold for market. Wikipedia says the term is used to differentiates from a “staple crop” i.e. what a farmer grows to eat for themselves. But staple crop redirects to “staple food” all of which are grown as
commoditiescash crops so it’s an inconsistent mess.I think our schools just taught us wrong.
If you accept capitalism/wealth extraction is the natural state of the world, I’m sure calling it a cash crop starts to look like a meaningless distinction. (I’m not saying you do, but I also won’t say you don’t given the context)
I believe it’s worth noting that the mode of agricultural production that gives us wheat as a mass export commodity (often used as a tool for imperialist leverage against colonised peoples) does so for the sake of profit and not to feed humans.
It’s still not a cash crop though, you’re never goingto have a shitload of farmers growing wheat going OH NO WE OVER LEVERAGED INTO CASH CROPS AND NOW THERES A FAMINE
I’ll take “what’s the Irish famine?” For 500
That’s also not the Irish famine though.
Irish peasants grew potatoes because it was more or less the only thing nutrient dense enough to sustain them, due to ever decreasing lot-sizes. Then potato blight + English landlords forcing continued export of food, despite an ongoing famine.
Arguing that someone is willing to pay for food, thus all crops are cash crops is like arguing capitalism has been around forever because people traded in the middle ages
No don’t you understand, potatoes are just a cash crop because they were sold for cash! I blocked the guy
fucking exactly, this definition of cash crop literally would define any surplus of any crop as a cash crop. Your farm produces enough rice to sell? Ah you’re growing cash crops!! I’m getting angry that i even need to argue this
Irish tenant farmers grew potatoes as a subsistence crop, while the wealthy landlords grew wheat and oats as a cash crop to export. It is in fact a great illustration how growing food by itself will not stave off a famine when the social relation demands that thousands must starve for a few to get even wealthier.
Re: your last point, I have been careful not to blame capitalism specifically in this thread. Wheat was grown as a cash crop in Ancient Rome. The development of the slaver latifundia system leading to the economic marginalisation of the plebeians was a major source of class conflict in their society.
Weird how Ive never heard the Irish famine being blamed on “potatoes are a cash crop” until now as you nerds attempt to reinvent the term
Potatoes were the subsistence crop you smug ignorant dipshit. The landlords exported tons of and tons of wheat, barley and oats as cash crops even as thousands died from a preventable famine.
Go read my initial comment and tell me why might someone want to center the profit motive for crop production when discussing colonisation and global food security on a communist forum. It’s almost as if who owns the land and who chooses what to grow and where to send it has some bearing on the topic.
But no, you misunderstood a term and when corrected had to make it an entire thing instead of just learning and moving on. Also, miss me with the cope about AI hallucinations telling you you’re wrong. Maybe switch off the Forest Burninator 5000 and go look up a static resource to find out this is a term with decades of established use.
BTW the distinction you’re thinking of is food crops vs industrial crops.
there is no need to get confused about it, a cash crop is just the literal definition of a commodity. a thing produced with the explicit purpose of being sold.
You’re wrong
all crops that are harvested and sold are cash crops, or just commodities.
Yes. “We grow food for profit” is a simple statement but absolutely not a neutral one. I feel like I really shouldn’t have to explain this on lemmygrad of all places.
deleted by creator
Hey, what’s up, I live in Ag Country.
Cash Crop is kind of a meaningless distinction, but the way farmers use the term is to separate the portion of their field/harvest not by type or species but what their plan for that chunk of the field is, come harvest time.
There are farmers near me that designate about 10-20% of their soybean or wheat yield as Personal or Subsistence Crop to feed to their family and livestock, and then the other 80-90% of that is Cash Crop.
The colloquial use of the term Cash Crop has entered the public consciousness incorrectly, and the argument here is basically the same as when people misunderstand the definition of the word Theory. There’s a breakdown between the specific scientific use as a format for an explanation distinct from a Law, and the colloquial use which just means an idea.
Why did that happen? Because in many places of the world and at different times, farmers were forced to designate most or all of their yield to be sold or to choose which crops they plant based entirely on sale price to the detriment of their ability to grow their personal subsistence crops. That concept is what entered the public consciousness, and I think that’s the problem here.
I will never agree with another definition for cash crops, cash crops are crops whose only utility is to be sold for cash and that’s an inherent property of the actual thing being farmed. Defining all commodified crops as cash crops also muddles analysis of things like what’s going on with this wheat (sold to Africa cheap, African farmers can’t compete on staple foods, and consequently choose to grow other crops i.e. cotton or soy for sale. One definition has both U.S. and African producers growing “cash crops” but that ignores that one being a staple food product, the ones relying on the import of that have overwhelming dependency on that continued import to not starve)
Also like things like tobacco and cotton, you can’t subsist on them at all. They only have purpose as raw materials to be sold. That’s what makes them inherently cash crops. I will never agree with another definition, I’ll just say the other person is wrong. If farmers are using the wrong definition then that’s fine, they can be wrong too
No, yeah, I feel you. That’s why Literally means Figuratively and linguistic prescriptivism is bad.
Words have meanings and those meanings are whatever I want them to be and everyone else is wrong!
Finally someone gets it
Marxism is an eternal method, an immortal science if you will, which seeks to explain the world accurately. Part of science is refining our beliefs and methods when we discover more accurate information, so part of being a good Marxist is learning to accept when we are wrong about things in healthy ways and to grow from that experience.
If only these people could accept that they are wrong in insisting that any commodified crop is a cash crop, but alas, i can’t force them to grow
Yes, wouldn’t cash crops be for instance corn and soy which are largely not for human consumption (biofuels/livestock feed)
I would consider those cash crops yeah because those are the intended purposes and a lot of it can’t even be used for human consumption even if you wanted to. Wheat has industrial uses (literally everything does) but I’ve never heard of it being grown on anywhere near the scale of those for those purposes
Anyway Google’s lying machine says i’m wrong but i still disagree
Google is psyoping again trust the plan 🌽🌾
Every now and then i feel like the entire world retcons some bit of language into some absolute fucking nonsense and this is one of those times. A cash crop isn’t a cash crop just because it’s sold for fucking money, it’s a cash crop if being sold for money is all it’s fucking good for!
This makes it sound like cash crops are the agricultural equivalent of NFTs lol
all crops that are sown to be sold on the market are commodities, wrongly named cash crops.
While I’ll concede that commodity better captures the social relation, I disagree that cash crop is somehow the wrong name. In the context of my initial comment it worked well enough, I thought.
In any case, I’m gonna drop this, we’ve gotten way past constructive discourse here. I did appreciate your contributions though.
cash crop = commodity.
You’re wrong