Based on Source 3 and Source 4, which statement best describes how technological advancements caused sugarcane and cotton to become Louisiana’s top cash crops?
A
The Port of New Orleans imposed bigger tariffs on imports.
B
Manufacturing was large and of more importance than the agricultural industry.
C
Plantation owners were able to increase the amount of goods that were produced.
D
Manufacturing was large and focused on exports to international markets.
Source 3: Almost all of the sugar grown in the United States during the Antebellum period came from Louisiana. Louisiana produced from one-quarter to one-half of all sugar consumed in the United States. In any given year the combined crop of other sugar-producing states in the South was less than five percent of that of Louisiana. Louisiana's sugar harvest rose from 5,000 hogsheads (a large barrel that held an average of 1,000 pounds of sugar) in 1802 to a high of 449,000 hogsheads in 1853, peaking at an average price of $69 each in 1858, bringing the total value of Louisiana's sugar crop to $25 million.
Source 4: Agrarian Life Cotton was king in Louisiana and most of the Deep South during the Antebellum period. Between 1840 and 1860 Louisiana's annual cotton crop rose from about 375,000 bales to nearly 800,000 bales. In 1860 Louisiana produced about one-sixth of all cotton grown in the United States and almost one-third of all cotton exported from the United States, most of which went to Britain and France. Although Louisianians grew some cotton in the colonial period, they, like other producers, did not find it profitable until Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. Prior to the cotton gin, laborers had to separate cotton seeds from fiber by hand, a long and tedious process. Because gins were fairly simple machines that many firms could manufacture, cotton production increased rapidly throughout the South.