Meaning & use

cash crop

noun·Academic

A crop grown mainly to sell for profit rather than for the farmer's own use.

See it in a sentence

Coffee became the region's main cash crop after the old sugar plantations closed.

Farmers switched from subsistence farming to a single profitable cash crop.

A note on using this word

Cash crop contrasts with subsistence crops, which farmers grow mainly to feed their own families rather than to sell.

Words with a similar meaning

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Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Words with an opposite meaning

subsistence crop

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