I was given a cause and effect chart. The causes state: Slavery is abolished, small farmers lack capital to buy land, and planters need a stable workforce. In the middle is says sharecropping and tenant farming. Then it points below to effects which are farmers are caught in a cycle of debt, planters and merchants prosper, and agricultural focus shifts from food crops to cash crops. Then it asks what is the answer to major questions. What does it mean by that? There is no questions under than one question under the chart asking How did farmers get caught in a cycle of debt?

The farmers got caught in a cycle of debt because it says they did not have capital to buy land and therefore I suspect they had to borrow.