Economically, the major force in Alabama was the mechanization and consolidation of agriculture. Mechanical cotton pickers became available in the postwar era, reducing the need for many agricultural workers. They tended to move into the region's urban areas. Still, by 1963, only about a third of the state's cotton was picked by machine. Diversification from cotton into soybeans, poultry and dairy products also drove more poor people off the land. In the state's thirty-five Appalachian counties, twenty-one lost population between 1950 and 1960. What was once a rural state became more industrial and urban.