Work was heavily organised and performed by the community as a whole under the direction of the Arii ruling class and the priests.

Mountains were terraced for agriculture production, river banks were contained by stone walls, artificial soil was created on atolls in large trenches, and large systems made out of coral stone walls trapped and stocked live fish.

After the contact was established with European ships, foreign diseases killed large portions of the populations, and Christian beliefs and clergy produced a huge shift in the culture of those islands.

European ships stopped in those islands to purchase water, salt pork meat, dried fish and fresh fruits.

As French, English and Americans settled, part of the agriculture moved towards exports of oranges, coprah, coffee, cotton, and vanilla.

Santal wood nearly disappeared, cotton production was short-lived, as the US's south recovered from the American Civil War, and coffee and orange trees suffered from imported diseases that stopped those exports.

Coprah and vanilla prices and competition worldwide impacted heavily those productions in the second half of the 20th century, although they still exist.

French Polynesia's economy switched to services to support the military and the growing tourist industry.

Recently, the local government tries to maintain a healthy competition and regulate the growth of the biggest groups, but face many challenges.

For example, it was unable to prevent a major supermarket group to develop its own vegetable production, ending its supplying contracts with local farmers.

The price of shipping goods between islands is fixed by the government, and subsidies are provided for transporting some items like farming products or construction materials.

Around 5% of the population is of Asian origin, descending from farm workers imported in the 19th century to work in the cotton fields.

The copra production is heavily subsidized as the local government treats it as a form of social support for the remote islands with a limited range of economic activities possibilities like Tuamotu atolls.

A small vineyard production exists in Rangiroa atoll and is aimed at the high-end market, capitalizing on its rarity and specificity of a vine grown on coral soil in a tropical island.