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'''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 bean|cocoa]], [[sugar cane]], [[opium]], [[sisal]], [[oil seeds]], [[oil palm]]s, fruits, [[Hevea brasiliensis|rubber trees]] and forest trees. [[Protectionism|Protectionist]] policies and natural [[comparative advantage]] have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located.

In modern use, the term usually refers only to large-scale estates. Before about 1860, 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. The enslavement of people was the norm in Maryland and states southward. The plantations there were forced-labor farms. The term "plantation" was used in most British colonies but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. There it was used mainly for [[tree plantation]]s, 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.<ref>[https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Plantation "Plantation"] in the ''History of Early American Landscape Design'', Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (Washington DC).</ref>

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 [[Globalisation|worldwide economy]] that followed the expansion of [[Colonialism|European colonialism]].

== By crop ==

=== Tree plantations ===
{{Main|Tree plantation}}

Tree plantations, in the United States often called [[tree farm]]s, are established for the commercial production of timber or tree products such as [[palm oil]], [[coffee]], or [[rubber]]. 

[[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 [[environmental restoration]].

[[File:Sugar cane workers resting 1a34016v.jpg|thumb|Sugar cane workers in [[Puerto Rico]], 1941]]

===Sugar===
{{Main|Sugar plantations in the Caribbean}}
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===
[[File:Cuba canna da zucchero.jpg|thumb|[[Sugarcane]] plantation in rural [[Cuba]]]]
Plantings of the Pará rubber tree (''[[Hevea brasiliensis]]'') are usually called plantations.

===Oil palm plants===
[[Oil palm]] agriculture rapidly expands across wet tropical regions and is usually developed at a plantation scale.

===Orchards===
Fruit [[orchard]]s 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 dye|indigo]] and [[rice]] were also sometimes called plantation crops.
[[File:Harvesting tea in Bogor, West Java.jpg|thumb|Harvesting tea in Bogor, West Java]]

== 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.<ref>{{Cite news |title=How Coffee Influenced The Course Of History |url=https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/04/24/178625554/how-coffee-influenced-the-course-of-history |access-date=2022-12-07 |work=NPR |language=en}}</ref> 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 [[wetland]]s to replace mixed [[hardwood]]s 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 [[Wildlife corridor|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.

==Slave plantation==
{{Main|Slave plantation}}

[[File:CottonpickHoustonWhere17.png|thumb|1913 photo: African-Americans picking cotton on a plantation in the [[Southern United States|South]]]]
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 [[sharecropping system]], and even that has been severely reduced. At its most extreme, workers are in "[[debt bondage]]": they must work to pay off a debt at such punitive interest rates that it may never be paid off. Others work unreasonably long hours and are paid subsistence wages that (in practice) may only be spent in the [[truck system|company store]].

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 town]]s known as ''[[Batey (sugar workers' town)|bateyes]]''.

=== American South ===
{{Excerpt|Plantations in the American South}}

== Society and culture ==

===Fishing===
When [[Colony of Newfoundland|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:
* Sea-Forest Plantation was a 17th-century fishing plantation established at Cuper's Cove (present-day [[Cupids]]) under a [[royal charter]] issued by [[James I of England|King James I]].
* Mockbeggar Plantation is an 18th-century fishing plantation at [[Bonavista, Newfoundland and Labrador|Bonavista]].
* Pool Plantation a 17th-century fishing plantation maintained by [[Sir David Kirke]] and his heirs at [[Ferryland, Newfoundland and Labrador|Ferryland]]. The plantation was destroyed by [[France|French]] invaders 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.

==See also==
{{Portal|Agriculture and Agronomy|Trees}}
* [[Forest farming]]
* [[List of plantations]]
* [[Plantation complexes in the Southern United States]]
* [[Slavery in the United States]]
* [[Sugar plantations in the Caribbean]]

==References==
;Notes
{{Reflist}}

;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.
* [[Elizabeth Anesta Sewell|Lewes, Diana]], A Year in Jamaica: Memoirs of a girl in Arcadia in 1889 (Eland, 2013) {{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==
{{Commons category-inline|Plantations}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120319145527/http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/features/for_fea_roundwood_complete.pdf Trends in Round wood production]
* [http://www.earthrepair.net Earth Repair Network] Advocates plantation forestry.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20051111172457/http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/material/pulping.html "Pulping the South"] Criticism of industrial plantations.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20190721134850/https://wrm.org.uy/ NGO World Rainforest Movement]

{{Forestry}}
{{Plantation agriculture in the Southeastern United States}}
{{Sugar}}

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[[Category:Agricultural establishments]]
[[Category:Forest management]]
[[Category:Plantations| ]]