The crops were all destroyed and long gone. The south had battles on many fields that once grew various types of crops. Men went missing who once tended the fields for the crops to go. Many of them ended up injured or even worse, death. Plantations were left abanded and destroyed. Transportation was gone. Railroad lines had been pulled out or torn apart to prevent the south from moving supplies. Even walking to find a way out was very dangerous for anybody.
The cotton industry in the south had a hard time recovering because they had lost a lot of workers, which was the slaves. another reason was that they had lost a lot of land and crops because they were destroyed or ruined by the Union army, also a lot of the plantation owners were dead or severely injured after the war
