02/23/2022
You may have heard of George Washington Carver [1861(?)- 1943] but did you know he altered the South’s reliance on cotton?
Cotton sucked the nitrogen from the soil, thus making the fields inhospitable for any growing. Carver encouraged southern planters to plant legumes, ultimately seeing that peanuts and sweet potatoes restored nitrogen to the soil allowing fields to be further used for cultivation.
When farmers found they had no market for crops of peanuts and sweet potatoes, Carver went about inventing new products from these two legumes, from flours,inks, plastics, and wood stains, to vinegar, molasses, and even postage stamp glue!
Read more at the links below:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Washington-Carver
https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/a35181062/black-history-facts/
George Washington Carver, American agricultural chemist, agronomist, and experimenter whose development of new products derived from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans helped revolutionize the agricultural economy of the South. Learn more about Carver’s life and career in this article.