Plantation

[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.

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).

Such plantations are established to foster native species and promote forest regeneration on degraded lands as a tool of environmental restoration.

These natural endowments included soil conducive to growing sugar and a high marginal product of labor realized through the increasing number of enslaved people.

In some cases, their establishment may involve draining wetlands to replace mixed hardwoods that formerly predominated with pine species.

A planted forest can be profitably established on lands that will not support agriculture or suffer from a lack of natural regeneration.

However, even non-native tree species may serve as corridors for wildlife and act as a buffer for native forests, reducing edge effect.

In more recent times, overt slavery has been replaced by para-slavery or slavery-in-kind, including the sharecropping system, and even that has been severely reduced.

Others work unreasonably long hours and are paid subsistence wages that (in practice) may only be spent in the company store.

In Brazil, a sugarcane plantation was termed an engenho ("engine"), and the 17th-century English usage for organized colonial production was "factory."

Until the abolition of slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people.