Subsistence Farming in Southern Florida (1840–1940): The Importance of Sweet Potato—In Memory of Daniel F. Austin

Abstract

Daniel F. Austin (1943–2015) was a leading authority on Convolvulaceae and especially the Ipomoea batatas complex, which includes the sweet potato and its relatives. He also published extensively on the useful plants of Florida. However, he never examined sweet potato and its importance to Florida’s Native American populations or its early settlers. This paper fills that gap. Foraging supported southern Florida’s first inhabitants, and supplemented subsistence agriculture for European, African–American, and indigenous populations, who later settled throughout the region. Large–scale maize cultivation was noted in northern Florida at the time of European contact. At the state’s southern terminus, only limited agriculture was feasible until drainage projects began in the 1900s. Here, I document the importance of sweet potato as a major subsistence crop in southern Florida from the 1840s to the 1940s. Like other systems in the humid tropics, sweet potato and other root crops replaced corn as the primary staple. One can argue that, without the sweet potato, early settlement in southern Florida would have failed until the railroads could bring imported foods.