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However, even non-native tree species may serve as corridors for wildlife and act as a buffer for native forest, reducing edge effect. Once a plantation is established, how it is managed becomes the important environmental factor. The single most important factor of management is the rotation period.
Plantations harvested on longer 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.
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 that was conducive to growing sugar and a high marginal product of labor realized through the increasing number of slaves.
Plantings of para rubber , the tree Hevea brasiliensis , are usually called plantations. Oil palm agriculture is rapidly expanding across wet tropical regions, and is usually developed at plantation scale.
Fruit orchards are sometimes considered to be plantations. These include tobacco , sugarcane , pineapple , and cotton , especially in historical usage. Before the rise of cotton in the American South, indigo and rice were also sometimes called plantation crops. When Newfoundland was colonized by England in , 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:. African slave labour was used extensively to work on early plantations such as tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar plantations in the American colonies and the United States, throughout the Caribbean, the Americas, and in European-occupied areas of Africa.
Several notable historians and economists such as Eric Williams , Walter Rodney , and Karl Marx contend that the global capitalist economy was largely founded upon the creation and produce of thousands of slave labor camps based in colonial plantations, exploiting tens of millions of purchased Africans. 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. 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 company store.
Consequently, this method of regeneration has proven to be unpredictable and unreliable and has therefore not been widely used in this country, particularly in commercial conifer plantations where uniformity of crops is sought. Researchers are now turning to sophisticated computer models and using larger and more-comprehensive data sets to nail down exactly what forests in different places do to the climate. There is a need to undertake a wide range of adaptation actions at different management levels that seek to appropriately modify rotation length, tree species, stand structure and growth and yield models, and at the genetic level that prepare the planted forests to benefit from the pending changes in the climate. Tim Radford. II, Lee, X.
In Brazil, a sugarcane plantation was termed an engenho "engine" , and the 17th-century English usage for organized colonial production was "factory. Sugar workers on plantations in Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean lived in company towns known as bateyes.
In the American South , antebellum plantations were centered on a " plantation house ," the residence of the owner, where important business was conducted. Slavery and plantations had different characteristics in different regions of the South. As the Upper South of the Chesapeake Bay colonies developed first, historians of the antebellum South defined planters as those who held 20 or more slaves.
Major planters held many more, especially in the Deep South as it developed.
By the late 18th century, most planters in the Upper South had switched from exclusive tobacco cultivation to mixed-crop production, both because tobacco had exhausted the soil and because of changing markets. The shift away from tobacco meant they had slaves in excess of the number needed for labor, and they began to sell them in the internal slave trade.
There was a variety of domestic architecture on plantations. The largest and wealthiest planter families, for instance, those with estates fronting on the James River in Virginia , constructed mansions in brick and Georgian style, e. Shirley Plantation. Common or smaller planters in the late 18th and 19th century had more modest wood frame buildings, such as Southall Plantation in Charles City County.
2. Planted forests are a legitimate land use to provide wood, fibre, fuel and non- wood forest products, addressing industrial roundwood demand and sustainable. PLANTED FORESTS. Uses, Impacts and Sustainability. Edited by. Julian Evans. Published by. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and.
In the Lowcountry of South Carolina , by contrast, even before the American Revolution , planters holding large rice plantations typically owned hundreds of slaves. In Charleston and Savannah, the elite also held numerous slaves to work as household servants. The 19th-century development of the Deep South for cotton cultivation depended on large plantations with much more acreage than was typical of the Upper South; and for labor, planters held hundreds of slaves.
Until December slavery was legal in parts of the United States. Most slaves were employed in agriculture, and planter was a term commonly used to describe a farmer with many slaves. The term planter has no universally-accepted definition, but academic historians have defined it to identify the elite class, "a landowning farmer of substantial means. In his study of Black Belt counties in Alabama, Jonathan Wiener defines planters by ownership of real property, rather than of slaves. Formwalt's planters are in the top 4.
Campbell classifies large planters as owners of 20 slaves, and small planters as owners of between ten and 19 slaves. Planted forests are a component of a landscape strategy to produce the ecosystem goods and services that can assist to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. The right mix of land-use types depends on societal objectives and needs, the limits of the land, the political and business environment, and the management tools available.
Upcoming events World Teak Conference, 24 August In , the 3rd International Congress on Planted Forests was held to discuss the current state of knowledge on planted forests globally and regionally. Amongst a number of findings, the congress noted that planted forest area continued to increase and that the goods and services provided by these forests were becoming increasingly diverse. The interaction of planted forests with other land uses within landscapes and their contribution to poverty alleviation and food security was identified.
Risks to planted forests from climate change, socio-economic pressures and responses to these risks were seen as important. A global analysis indicated the importance of planted forests for economic, environmental and social values, and also the complementary nature of planted forests to natural forests.