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Plantation

Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, opium, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, fruits, rubber trees and forest trees. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located.

For other uses, see Plantation (disambiguation).

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 latifundia of the Roman Empire, which produced large quantities of grain, wine, and olive oil for export. Plantation agriculture proliferated with the increase in international trade and the development of a worldwide economy that followed the expansion of European colonialism.

Ecological impact[edit]

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.[2] Once the soil had been sapped, growers would move on to another place. If a natural forest is cleared for a planted forest, then a reduction in biodiversity and loss of habitat will likely result. In some cases, their establishment may involve draining wetlands to replace mixed hardwoods 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 biodiversity loss occurs. However, even non-native tree species may serve as corridors for wildlife and act as a buffer for native forests, reducing edge effect.


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.

Society and culture[edit]

Fishing[edit]

When Newfoundland was colonized by England in 1610, the original colonists were called "planters", and their fishing rooms were known as "fishing plantations". These terms were used well into the 20th century.


The following three plantations are maintained by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador as provincial heritage sites:

Other fishing plantations:

Forest farming

List of plantations

Plantation complexes in the Southern United States

Slavery in the United States

Sugar plantations in the Caribbean

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.

A Year in Jamaica: Memoirs of a girl in Arcadia in 1889 (Eland, 2013) ISBN 978-1906011833

Lewes, Diana

Savill, P. Evans, J. Auclair, D. Falk, J. (1997). Plantation Silviculture in Europe. Oxford University Press. Oxford.  0198549091

ISBN

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.

Trends in Round wood production

Advocates plantation forestry.

Earth Repair Network

Criticism of industrial plantations.

"Pulping the South"

NGO World Rainforest Movement

Media related to Plantations at Wikimedia Commons