Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of operations”; because the crops required “year round employment of labor”; and because
the crops required “a large amount of labor on a small amount of land, thus simplifying the
problem of supervision” (463).
The famous study of slavery by Fogel and Engermann (1974) also found that slaves were
much more important for cotton and sugarcane than for wheat, corn and other grains, even
in the antebellum South. For example, they find that the larger the number of residents on
a farm (family, hired labor and slaves), the greater the proportion were slaves. Plantation
agriculture was designed to exploit a specialized labor force. In the words of Fogel and
Engermann:
Specialization and interdependence were the hallmarks of the medium- and large-sized plantations.
On family-sized farms, each worker had to fulfill a multiplicity of duties according to a pace and
pattern which were quite flexible and largely independent of the activities of others. On plantations,
the hands were as rigidly organized as in a factory. Each hand was assigned to a set of tasks which
occupied him throughout the year, or at least through particular seasons of the year. There were drivers,
plowmen, hoe hands, harrowers, seed sowers, coverers, sorters, ginners, packers, milkmaids, stock
minders, carpenters, blacksmiths, nurses, and cooks to give only a partial listing. (P. 203)
This vivid description shows how economic organization exploited task specialization and,
more important, shows how the type of crop and seasonal forces shape the potential gains
from such specialization.
23
Compared to grain crops like corn and wheat, plantation crops had a small number
of stages that lasted over long periods, allowing great gains from specialization and low
cost monitoring. For example, cotton was continually cultivated by hand with hoes, and
because the bolls (the seed pod of the cotton plant) ripened so unevenly cotton picking
lasted for months (prediction 9.3). Beyond North America, the great exception to family-
based agricultural organization is the equatorial plantation (Pryor 1982). Plantation crops,
including banana, coffee, and sugarcane, are characterized by relatively long growing stages
and a relatively small variance in nature-driven shocks. Indeed, some plantation crops (such
as bananas and coffee) may have a continuous year-round harvest. For these crops, large
hierarchical organizations with wage labor (or slaves) have dominated (Raup 1973; Pryor
1982).
24
Temporal Changes in Agriculture: Narrowing the Extent of the Family Farm.
From
the colonial period until the mid-nineteenth century, nonplantation farms in the United
States were organized as family businesses that controlled nearly the entire production
process.
25
Since that time, the growth in the factory method of production has limited the
extent of the family farm at both the beginning and the end of the production sequence. As
a result, the modern family farm controls a more limited set of production stages.
