So if it was being grazed (I'll assume cows) and beef is in short supply, how does more tillable land help actual food (that people can eat) supplies when the south is already crying about grain and cotton prices being too low?     Seems like more cows and more grazing would help the food supply more.

What kind of productivity could that land be capable of?      What little of Florida I've seen doesn't look like that great of soil but then neither did the area of Georgia that I visited some years back but they were raising good crops there on ground that looked like gravel.