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Caribbean Islands Crops
Jamaica's monoculture sugar economy became diversified after
emancipation, when former slaves planted a wide variety of food and
some cash crops. Agricultural produce was quite varied in the
1980s, and included export crops, domestic crops, mixed crops, and
nontraditional export crops; the latter comprised both new crops
and those traditionally grown but not previously exported.
Sugar has been the dominant crop in Jamaica for centuries with
the exception of the fifty-year period from 1890 to 1940. Even in
the late 1980s, sugarcane fields covered over 25 percent of the
total area under crops and employed about 18 percent of the total
work force, although that demand was seasonal. Sugar production
(including rum) accounted for nearly 50 percent of agricultural
export earnings in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, sugar production
declined sharply from 1965, when 60,000 hectares of cane fields
produced 515,000 tons, to 1984, when 40,000 hectares produced only
193,000 tons. Many factors contributed to the decline of sugar,
such as world price declines, falling yields, declining quality,
labor unrest, and factory inefficiency. Farms over 200 hectares
held the overwhelming share of the land under cane, usually on the
fertile coastal plains. Jamaica's history as a slave-based, sugar
plantation society marked sugarcane, and cane cutting in
particular, with a strong social stigma.
Jamaica enjoyed two preferential markets for its sugar in the
mid-1980s in the European Economic Community (EEC) through the Lomé
Convention (see Glossary) and in the United States market via the
United States sugar quota. In the 1980s, Jamaica was allocated 1.1
percent of the sugar imported into the United States from the world
market. Although the United States sugar quota for Jamaican sugar
dropped rapidly from 1984 to 1986 from 30,000 tons to 17,000 tons,
Jamaica's own dwindling production prevented it from meeting the
quota level in 1984. In 1985 the island actually imported several
thousand tons of refined sugar for the domestic market. Meanwhile,
the EEC remained a stable market.
Bananas were the only crop in Jamaica to have surpassed sugar
in export revenues. After the peak years of the early twentieth
century, however, banana production and exports were cyclical and
generally in decline. During the 1970s, production decreased
rapidly from 136,000 tons in 1970 to 33,000 tons in 1980. Although
major efforts were made by the government and farmers, the
production decline continued in the 1980s with 1984's figures
totalling only 11,100 tons, one of the worst of the century.
Several factors accounted for ebbing production, including slow
technological advance, diseases, shortage of inputs, natural
disaster, and transportation bottlenecks. In contrast to sugar,
bananas were typically produced by small farmers. Most farms that
grew bananas grew other crops as well. Banana exports were destined
for Britain, where Jamaica had preferential access for up to
150,000 tons of its bananas against non-Commonwealth nations.
Citrus products, which included oranges, sweet oranges,
tangerines, grapefruits, and various hybrids, were usually grown on
small farms. The large interior town of Mandeville was the hub of
the industry. Citrus output was stable in the first half of the
1980s and reached 754,000 boxes in 1985. Citrus fruits enjoyed a
large domestic market for direct consumption and processing. Many
farmers picked their own produce to sell directly to consumers.
Government policies in the 1980s sought to expand larger-scale
production and emphasized fruit processing for juices,
concentrates, preserves, or canned fruit.
Coffee, cultivated since the early 1720s, remained an important
export crop for small and large farmers in the 1980s. All coffee
growing was regulated by a central organization, the Coffee
Industry Board. Two varieties of coffee grew in Jamaica. Lowland
coffee was generally grown on small farms and accounted for about
80 percent of output in the early 1980s. Blue Mountain coffee
represented 20 percent of output but was steadily gaining a larger
share of production. The number of hectares with Blue Mountain
coffee doubled in the first 5 years of the 1980s to over 2,000
hectares, but Lowland's cultivation remained constant. New coffee
farms were generally medium-to-large in size. Jamaican coffee
enjoyed exceptional prices relative to world prices. Lowland coffee
averaged a price two to three times the world price, whereas the
highly aromatic Blue Mountain coffee received four to five times
the world price. Some 1,000 tons of coffee were exported in 1984.
Almost all of Jamaica's Blue Mountain coffee was sold to the
Japanese, who were willing to pay top prices.
Jamaica produced a number of other traditional export crops
such as cocoa (derived from the cacao plant), tobacco, coconuts,
pimento, and ginger. Jamaican cacao plants were relatively diseaseand pest-free. Most cacao was cultivated on small farms on
hillsides as a mixed crop. Although world cocoa prices were
cyclical, Jamaica tended to receive a premium price for its cocoa.
Some 51 tobacco farms produced 269,000 kilograms of tobacco in 1985
for both the domestic and export market. The tobacco industry was
undergoing a process of deregulation. Coconuts were recovering from
a lethal yellowing disease that killed 88 percent of the Jamaican
variety. New varieties were being grown to continue to produce
coconut derivatives such as soaps and oils from copra. Pimento,
from which allspice is derived, remained stable and was also
deregulated. The island's ginger was of high quality and found easy
market access abroad, as well as being sold locally for use in
nonalcoholic ginger beer, chocolate, and national dishes.
Numerous domestic crops, both fruits and vegetables, were also
grown. Tubers, the most important staple crop, included yams, sweet
potatoes, cassava, and dasheens. Popular vegetables included
calaloo (a type of greens), sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes,
cucumbers, corn, and pumpkin. Abundant fruits such as plantains,
avocados, mangoes, pineapples, soursop, breadfruit akee and melons
were also grown. Legumes were also common, especially gungo peas,
red peas (Jamaicans call beans peas), and peanuts. Jamaica was
relatively self-sufficient in vegetable production.
Data as of November 1987
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