Plantation
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Plantations are farms specializing in
In modern use, the term usually refers only to large-scale estates. Nevertheless, before about 1800, it was the usual term for a farm of any size in the southern parts of British North America, with, as Noah Webster noted, "farm" becoming the usual term from about Maryland northward. It was used in most British colonies but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. There, as also in America, it was used mainly for tree plantations, areas artificially planted with trees, whether purely for commercial forestry, or partly for ornamental effect in gardens and parks, when it might also cover plantings of garden shrubs.[1]
Among the earliest examples of plantations were the
Tree plantations
Tree plantations, in the United States often called
Teak and bamboo plantations in India have given good results and an alternative crop solution to farmers of central India, where conventional farming was widespread. But due to the rising input costs of agriculture, many farmers have done teak and bamboo plantations, which require very little water (only during the first two years). Teak and bamboo have legal protection from theft. Bamboo, once planted, gives output for 50 years till flowering occurs. Teak requires 20 years to grow to full maturity and fetch returns.
These may be established for watershed or soil protection. They are established for erosion control, landslide stabilization, and windbreaks. Such plantations are established to foster native species and promote forest regeneration on degraded lands as a tool of
Ecological impact
Probably the most critical factor a plantation has on the local environment is the site where the plantation is established. In Brazil, coffee plantations would use slash-and-burn agriculture, tearing down rainforests and planting coffee trees that depleted the nutrients in soil. that formerly predominated with pine species. If a plantation is established on abandoned agricultural land or highly degraded land, it can increase both habitat and biodiversity. A planted forest can be profitably established on lands that will not support agriculture or suffer from a lack of natural regeneration.
The tree species used in a plantation are also an important factor. Where non-native varieties or species are grown, few native faunas are adapted to exploit these, and further
Once a plantation is established, managing it becomes an important environmental factor. The most critical aspect of management is the rotation period. Plantations harvested on more extended rotation periods (30 years or more) can provide similar benefits to a naturally regenerated forest managed for wood production on a similar rotation. This is especially true if native species are used. In the case of exotic species, the habitat can be improved significantly if the impact is mitigated by measures such as leaving blocks of native species in the plantation or retaining corridors of natural forest. In Brazil, similar measures are required by government regulation.
Sugar
Sugar plantations were highly valued in the Caribbean by the British and French colonists in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the use of sugar in Europe rose during this period. Sugarcane is still an important crop in Cuba. Sugar plantations also arose in countries such as Barbados and Cuba because of the natural endowments that they had. These natural endowments included soil conducive to growing sugar and a high marginal product of labor realized through the increasing number of enslaved people.
Rubber
Plantings of the Pará rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) are usually called plantations.
Oil palm plants
Orchards
Fruit orchards are sometimes considered to be plantations.
Arable crops
These include tobacco, sugarcane, pineapple, bell pepper, and cotton, especially in historical usage.
Before the rise of cotton in the American South, indigo and rice were also sometimes called plantation crops.
Fishing
When
The following three plantations are maintained by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador as provincial heritage sites:
- Sea-Forest Plantation was a 17th-century fishing plantation established at Cuper's Cove (present-day King James I.
- Mockbeggar Plantation is an 18th-century fishing plantation at Bonavista.
- Pool Plantation a 17th-century fishing plantation maintained by Ferryland. The plantation was destroyed by Frenchinvaders in 1696.
Other fishing plantations:
- Bristol's Hope Plantation, a 17th-century fishing plantation established at Harbour Grace, created by the Bristol Society of Merchant-Adventurers.
- Benger Plantation, an 18th-century fishing plantation maintained by James Benger and his heirs at Ferryland. It was built on the site of a Georgia plantation.
- Piggeon's Plantation, an 18th-century fishing plantation maintained by Ellias Piggeon at Ferryland.
Plantation slave economy
Plantation owners extensively used enslaved Africans to work on early plantations (such as tobacco, rice, cotton, hemp, and sugar plantations) in the American colonies and the United States, throughout the Caribbean, the Americas, and in European-occupied areas of Africa.
In modern times, the low wages typically paid to plantation workers are the basis of plantation profitability in some areas.
In more recent times, overt slavery has been replaced by para-slavery or slavery-in-kind, including the
In Brazil, a sugarcane plantation was termed an engenho ("engine"), and the 17th-century English usage for organized colonial production was "factory." Such colonial social and economic structures are discussed at Plantation economy.
Sugar workers on plantations in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean lived in company towns known as bateyes.
American South
Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in the
Plantations are an important aspect of the
See also
- Forest farming
- List of plantations
- Plantation complexes in the Southern United States
- Slavery in the United States
- Sugar plantations in the Caribbean
References
- Notes
- ^ "Plantation" in the History of Early American Landscape Design, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (Washington DC).
- ^ "How Coffee Influenced The Course Of History". NPR. Retrieved 2022-12-07.
- ISBN 978-0-19-984328-2.
- ISBN 978-0-316-70607-0.
- ^ Robert J. Vejnar II (November 6, 2008). "Plantation Agriculture". The Encyclopedia of Alabama. Auburn University. Retrieved April 15, 2011.
- ISBN 978-0-8078-4412-0.
- Bibliography
- Aldhous, J. R. & Low, A. J. (1974). The potential of Western Hemlock, Western Red Cedar, Grand Fir, and Noble Fir in Britain. Forestry Commission Bulletin 49.
- Everard, J. E. & Fourt, D. F. (1974). Monterey Pine and Bishop Pine as plantation trees in southern Britain. Quarterly Journal of Forestry 68: 111–25.
- ISBN 978-1906011833
- Savill, P. Evans, J. Auclair, D. Falk, J. (1997). Plantation Silviculture in Europe. Oxford University Press. Oxford. ISBN 0198549091
- Sedjo, R. A. & Botkin, D. (1997). Using forest plantations to spare natural forests. Environment 39 (10): 15–20, 30
- Thompson, Edgar Tristram. The Plantation edited by Sidney Mintz and George Baca (University of South Carolina Press; 2011) 176 pp. 1933 dissertation
- Virts, Nancy, "Change in the Plantation System: American South, 1910–1945," Explorations in Economic History, 43 (Jan. 2006), 153–76.
External links
Media related to Plantations at Wikimedia Commons
- Trends in Round wood production
- Earth Repair Network Advocates plantation forestry.
- "Pulping the South" Criticism of industrial plantations.
- NGO World Rainforest Movement