cash crop
Americannoun
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any crop that is considered easily marketable, as wheat or cotton.
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a crop for direct sale in a market, as distinguished from a crop for use as livestock feed or for other purposes.
noun
Etymology
Origin of cash crop
An Americanism dating back to 1865–70
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Robert Addae, who has been farming the cash crop for 14 years, says this is not enough.
From BBC • Mar. 8, 2026
Canadian officials traveled to China last year to persuade Beijing to remove hefty tariffs on Canadian canola, or rapeseed, which is a major cash crop for farmers in western Canada.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 7, 2026
Today, the Salinas Valley’s biggest cash crop is strawberries, accounting for more than 20% of Monterey County’s $4.9-billion annual production value from agriculture.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 20, 2025
Just as in Kentucky, the devastation ripped an important cash crop away from rural mountain communities, spurring on city-bound migration as people fled withering agrarian economies.
From Salon • Dec. 18, 2023
When Chimbus saw white settlers planting coffee, they began growing coffee themselves as a cash crop.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
