The main, or central, idea of the passage is George Washington Carver helped farmers diversify from cotton farming by promoting the cultivation of peanuts. How does the detail in bold develop the main idea?
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.