Whether planters organized their enslaved people on the task or gang system had much to do with the type of crops they harvested.
Coffee, rice, cotton, and pimento were comparatively hardier plants where extensive supervision was unnecessary, leading planters to favor the task system on their plantations.
The women laborers played a major role in the work force for rice cultivation in South Carolina.
[3] This gendered division of labor that was already in place in the African tribal systems of rice cultivation before the Atlantic slave trade brought the enslaved people over to the American colonies.
This knowledge came from their sustained contact with slaves in shaping the Carolina frontier and growing food staples for mutual survival.