A programme for agriculture in island plantation economies

Small-island plantation economies have some structural characteristics, related to their size, which differentiate them from large continental plantation economies. Namely, they are more specialized, more dependent and less flexible than the latter.Those economic characteristics generate a particular political structure in which the plantation interest is predominant. This makes their adjustment to the present decline of some of the main traditional plantation crops difficult and painful, since most of their economic policy measures are not long-run policies to insure competitiveness, but are short-run expedients to save uncompetitive crops.The Caribbean islands, where one finds some of the oldest plantation economies, are a case in point. While the traditional export crops of the area, i.e. bananas, cane and pineapple, have been declining over the last 15 yr or so, the policies adopted by government towards the agricultural sector have proved inoperative.In this article, we analyze the weaknesses of these policies and we outline a programme for the agricultural sector.