The following paragraphs have main ideas that may appear at various places within the paragraph. Identify the main idea. 1In the South, the Civil War destroyed half the region’s farm equipment and killed one-third of its draft animals. 2The death of slavery also ended the plantation system. 3The number of farms doubled from 1860 to 1880, but the number of landowners remained the same. 4The size of the average farm dropped by more than half, as sharecropping and tenancy rose. 5A shortage of cash forced Southern farmers to borrow against future crops. 6Crop liens and high credit costs kept a lot of black and white farmers trapped in a cycle of debit and poverty. 7So at the very time the rest of the economy was consolidating after the Civil War, Southern agriculture was marching off in the opposite, less efficient direction.

7

5

2

1