Read the passage.
Carver's Creative Crops
Cotton was once the main cash crop of the southern United States, its cultivation and sale providing a reliable income for farmers. In the early 1900s, however, the South suffered a widespread infestation of boll weevils (beetles that feed on cotton), which annihilated cotton crops. Many farmers were plunged into poverty, no longer able to eke out a living from cotton. George Washington Carver, an agriculture professor at Alabama's Tuskegee Institute, addressed this situation by promoting crop diversification. He particularly advocated the cultivation of peanuts as a cash crop because they were easy to grow and had properties that helped replenish the cotton-depleted soil. As part of his campaign, Carver developed many unexpected peanut-based recipes, such as peanut carrot fudge and peanut soup. His innovations went well beyond the culinary, however: Carver also developed peanut-based soap, face powder, axle grease, printer's ink, and numerous other products. Peanut cultivation in the South increased rapidly, and the economy improved.
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