Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
cotton. The strains of a gospel song are linked with images of slaves picking cotton
or cutting sugarcane in the southern USA during the mid 1800s. Similar examples
existed throughout the colonial empires in the Caribbean, South America, Africa,
India and Australia. The word plantation is linked with colonialism, exploitation of
human capital and environment.
The term “plantation” is broad and ill defined yet the essential ingredients of the
plantation include;
• commonly owned by local wealthy families or foreign owned,
• a monocrop made up of an industrial, food, fibre or beverage crops,
• located in the tropics ideally suited to the climatic requirements of the crop,
• large production areas,
• low cost, or at times in history no cost slave labour, which allowed for the pro-
duction of goods at relatively low cost and maximisation of profit.
Definitions for plantations abound and crops included are; bananas, cocoa, coco-
nuts, coffee, cotton, hemp, jute, oil palm, pineapple, rubber, sisal, sugar cane, tea
and tobacco (Courtenay
1965
; Stephens et al.
1998
; Hartemink
2005
). The annual
production and area under cultivation of these crops is a challenge to accurately
quantify. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) collects and presents data,
with qualifications, on its FAOSTAT website. Areas of production and yield data,
for 2010, are presented in Table
8.1
(FAOSTAT). Coffee, coconut and oil palm each
have production areas which exceed 10 million hectares (Mha), while the area un-
der sugar cane exceeds 23 Mha. The economic value of plantation crops is consider-
able. Most plantation crops are produced in developing countries located through
out the tropical regions of the world. The economies of many developing coun-
tries are highly reliant on crop production with plantation crops being prominent
amongst them. The world top five producers of palm oil are Indonesia, Malaysia,
Thailand, Nigeria and Colombia. The coconut industry is predominately based in
developing countries with Indonesia, Philippines and India accounting for 37, 21
and 12.5 % of the value of production respectively. Agro-industrial plantation crops
such as cotton and sugar are also important income sources for developed nations.
The USA and Australia rank 4th (US$ 5,432 M) and 5th ($US 4,068M) respectively
for the value of cotton lint production and 8th (US$ 1142 M) and 10th (US$ 798 M)
respectively for the value of sugarcane production. China ranks 1st for value of
production of sugarcane and cotton lint producing US$ 31,128 M and US$ 9,700 M
of raw product respectively (FAOSTAT).
Plantation Crop Categories
Plantations in the 21
st
Century are less likely environments for exploitation of hu-
man and environmental capital, although the potential still exists. They are how-
ever, linked to crop production on a large scale for produce to be sold, at profit,
for export or distant markets rather than local sale. A range of crops can be broadly
