Plantation

Plantations are large farms growing a single crop that is sold for cash. They are established in areas that can produce a marketable cash crop. They often use large numbers of laborers, which enables the crop grown to achieve benefits from economies of scale.

[Page 356]Plantations are classified according to either the type of crop that is grown or the way in which labor is used. Large farms that raise cattle or grow some type of cereal such as wheat are usually excluded from the term plantation. Orchards are sometimes identified as plantations, especially if they grow nuts.

Large plantation-style farms existed in the Roman Empire, where lands owned by a wealthy businessman were worked by slaves. Large quantities of labor were needed because caring for vineyards and olive trees to make wine and olive oil requires a lot of hand labor. Mediterranean latifundia were a type of plantation introduced into Latin American countries.

In Anglo-American history, the term plantation was first used in Northern Ireland (Ulster). The Irish had been defeated by the English and Scots with great loss of life. Colonists (Ulstermen) were planted in the northern counties. From there the agricultural system and many descendants moved to America, where tobacco, indigo, rice, and ultimately cotton were the crops of the plantation days of the antebellum South. The Southern plantations were worked by slaves from Africa as well as by European indentured servants.

With the end of slavery at the end of the Civil War in 1865, all labor became free labor, but the slave system persisted in the form of sharecropping, used to raise cotton in fields that previously had been worked by slaves. Using “free” labor, plantations persisted into the 1900s because people on these plantations were trapped by the sharecropping system. The plantation owner would provide farmland, house, tools, seeds, perhaps draft animals, and other supplies in exchange for labor. Both the plantation owner and the sharecropper would get a portion of the crop and use it to pay debts at harvest time. If there was a good harvest, the system was beneficial; however, if the harvest was poor, sharecroppers would be in debt after the harvest. It was not until about 1900, when the boll weevil forced diversification of crops and mechanization from the 1920s and afterward, that the system almost ended.

Slave plantations were used extensively in the days of European colonialism in the Americas. Sugarcane was grown on plantations in Brazil (Portuguese engenho or “engine”), in Louisiana, and on many Caribbean islands such as Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica. Since large gangs of labor are often needed for agricultural crops, the end of slavery did not end plantation labor. Hawaiian pineapple, Central American bananas, and chicle are only three of the crops grown in the 1800s and 1900s that were grown on plantations.

Many plantations have been opened in tropical or semitropical countries. Plantation crops grown in Egypt and India include cotton. Tea, coffee, tobacco, cacao, sisal, hemp for rope, rubber, chicle (gum), indigo, and other crops have commonly been grown on plantations in semitropical or tropical areas.

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