Rivoli Chapter 3 Question Set Key
1.
Identify the collection of resources available to farmers in the Lubbock
area with which cotton growers in poor countries must compete.
Private
companies, farmer cooperatives, universities, US
government
2. What
happened to the importance of mules as cotton producers moved to West
Texas? Decreased How did this actually worsen the labor problem for a
cotton grower? West Texas farmers used tractors and
increased cotton production which meant that they had large acreages that still
needed to be picked.
3.
What factor led to the Bracero program? WWII drained agricultural
laborers out of West Texas. How did the program meet growers’
3 labor requirements? They could count on labor on demand; they knew in advance
what it would cost; they were guaranteed that labor would be productive. Why were West Texas
cotton growers willing to let the program end in the 1960s? 90% of
growers had shifted to mechanical production.
4.
What was the AAA? The Agricultural Adjustment Act was a federal price
support program that guaranteed prices and paid farmers to take land out of
production to limit supply of cotton. How did it lead to the demise of sharecropping? Farmers
in the Deep South took the payments to quit producing which
put sharecroppers out of work.
5.
How did differences in farm size lead to differences in the adoption of
mechanical cotton harvesters? Harvesters were expensive, too expensive for a
small farm. West Texas farms were already large
and farmers readily adopted mechanical harvesters. Farmers of the Deep
South often had much smaller farms and could not afford to adopt
mechanization.
6.
How did Texas growers
artificially create a killing freeze? Chemicals. Why did they need to do that? Harvesters
required dead plants.
7.
Rivoli characterizes the Reinsches’ farm history as “a narrative of discovery
after discovery”. List several of these discoveries. Mechanization,
chemical pesticides, chemical defoliants. What institutions, working in concert, made this
possible? USDA, universities, farmer cooperatives.
8. How
have the number and ownership of cotton gins changed during the past century? Decreased
a lot How did
this affect the Reinsches? It improved their control over the price they
received for their cotton bales. It also improved their profits because
they owned a share in the cooperatively-owned gin.
9.
List 6 products that the non-lint portion of harvested cotton is used in.
catfish food,
peanut butter, cattle feed, soap, potato chips, Olestra
10.
What are 3 ways that growers have pooled resources to profit from production?
Gin, bale
compression, denim mill for Levi-Strauss
11. Why
did buyers from domestic mills consider West Texas cotton to be of low quality?
Early
West Texas growers raised short and weak-fibered cotton.
What did West Texas
growers do with most of their cotton? They exported it.
12. How
does Nelson Reinsch avoid the risks of price fluctuations? He pools his
cotton in the growers’ cooperative market.
13. With
all of the subsidies how much more was the price the US
cotton growers received than that of the rest of the world’s farmers? It
was almost double the average world price: $.72 vs. $.38. How do subsidies received by
cotton growers compare with other farms sectors in the US?
Cotton growers receive more subsidies than wheat, corn or soybean farmers, 5
to 10 times greater.
14. How
do Step 2 subsidies protect cotton growers and textile mills? They limit the
amount of cotton US textile mills can import, so those mills have to buy more
expensive US
cotton. So, the government pays textile mills to buy US
cotton. The Step 2 subsidies also support exports of US
cotton. Where in
the US are the
textile mills? In the southeastern US especially the Carolinas.
15.
Compare the US
cotton subsidies with the GNP of the world’s poorest cotton producing
countries. The total of subsidies paid by the US
government to growers, $4 billion in 2000, exceeds the Gross National Product
of some poor cotton producing countries. Do the West African countries have a basis
for their complaints about lack of fair competition in global cotton markets? Yes.
16. What
do US cotton
subsidies do to the incomes of foreign cotton growers? It reduces
them. How? By
making cotton growing profitable in the US,
the government encourages an increase in cotton production. This
increases the supply of cotton on the world market and, thereby, lowers prices.
17.
Write one example of how US
cotton growers are “gazelles” and “lions”.
Gazelles
represent “entrepreneurial spirit and creativity”. Development of multiple
products from cotton, scientific research, mechanical innovation
Lions
represent political power. Suppressing labor markets, subsidies.
18. Use
the terms literacy, property rights, commercial infrastructure, and scientific
progress to explain Rivoli’s hesitancy to immediately do away with US subsidies.
Rivoli
is hesitant to immediately abolish subsidies because she is certain that other
cotton-producing regions do not have the institutions necessary to compete with
US growers. They do not have property rights that protect growers’
innovations and sweat equity. They do not have the commercial
infrastructure that will allow the timely and efficient transport of cotton.
They do not have the support of research institutions to improve cotton
production. Cutting off support for US growers will not sufficiently
improve the lot of foreign growers and will result in a dramatic decrease in
the world supply of cotton. Meanwhile corrupt, inefficient governments
will be the primary beneficiaries of the higher cotton prices not the growers.
19. Who
was Ned Cobb? An African-American sharecropper in Alabama
who was locked in an unfair agricultural and political system. Where do farmers like him grow
cotton currently? China,
India, West
Africa