Major
Plantation Crops in the Economy of Sri Lanka
Items Tea Rubber Coconut
Area 180,000 158,000 439,000
(Hectares)
Production 306 87 3,055*
(mn. kg) (mn.nuts)
Volume of
Exports 288 33 -
(mn.kg)
Volume
Exports
(Percentage) 94.11 62.06 -
Export
Earnings 53,200 2,179 9,174
(Rs.mn)
Export
Earnings
Out of
Agriculture
Exports
(Percentage) 69.66 2.85 12.02
Export
Earning
Out of
Total Exports 12.64 0.51 2.18
Value Added
to as
Percentage
of GDP 2.6 0.4 2.2
Note: *
including the nuts used for desiccated coconut (712 mn), coconut oil (387mn),
copra (84 mn), fresh nut exports (29 mn) and domestic consumption (1,832mn).
Source:
Annual Report 2003, Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
Labour force
According
to the Statistical Pocket Book published by the Ministry of Plantation the
permanent Labour force in the plantation sector was around 295,200 and it is 4.3
percent of the total labour force in the country in 2001. This figure reflects
to the registered workers in the private plantation management companies and
the workers in the JEDB and SLSPC. The
disintegration figures by different crops and the actual number of workers is
not available.
Introduction
Like in
Sri Lanka, plantation in an important and vital sector in the economies of many
countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the West Indies. The plantations
provide raw materials to the industrial nations of Europe and North America.
The system has been still in place with respect to the economic, social and
political institutions. All indicators show that this will continue to be in
the future as well.
The plantations system has introduced three main
transformations in these countries..
1. Creation of new pattern of exports
and imports
2. Large economic enterprises
3. Significant increase in the coercion
labour force
The plantation
sectors also developed as “enclaves” divorced from the mainstream of social and
economic activities. They are highly differential in economics and social
organisation from peasant agriculture in these countries.
The term
‘plantation’ is subject to various definitions.
According to Edgar T. Thomson (1957), plantation is one type of
settlement institution. It is a bureaucratically organized system in which
whole blacks of people are treated as units and are marched through a set of
regimentation under the surveillance of the small supervisory staff. However,
one of the most accepted interpretation in the context of Asia is “ an economic
unit producing agricultural commodities mainly field crops or horticultural
products, but not livestock for sale and employing a relatively large numbers
of unskilled labourers whose activities are closely supervised. Plantations
usually employ a year round labour crew of some size, and they usually
specialise in the production of only one or two marketable products. They
differ form other kinds of farms in the way in which the factors of production,
primarily management and labour are combined.
It is to be noted that this definition goes
back to 1960s, when the estate sector was chiefly large-scale. Another aspect
of this is deficient is the present situation where workers are not considered
to be unskilled labour. However, this is
a useful definition to go by
The greatest concentration of plantation economies is to be found is
the Caribbean but the greatest concentration of population is in Indo - Ceylon.
Plantation Economy in Ceylon
The plantation economy came into force only
through British Colonisation in Ceylon, Portugal and Holland had each enjoyed a
century and half of rule of the island, but there influence limited to the
narrow coastal belt. Their economic
interests were mainly on trading of was restricted to cinnamon, pearl, ivory
and other exotic commodities which Ceylon had been renowned since ancient
times.
The British interest in the early years centred
on the cinnamon that was one of the major trade commodity of the by the Dutch
companies (Holland’s) until 1796.
However, the revolutionary participation in the international trade was
established after the introduction of coffee plantation is the island in 1840s. British had developed a taste for coffee
during 18th century. The
coffee plant is not new to the peasants of Ceylon. They had been growing this crop but never as
a cash crop. The first coffee plantation
was set-up by sir Edward Barnes (later became governor) in 1823. The British government provided incentives,
like, abolition of an exports duty, exemption of land tax for coffee planting
areas, etc. Ceylon manage to oust West
Indian coffee from British Market during the 1840's.
However, the coffee plantation was affected
during world depression in 1846. Coffee
prices fell drastically within a period of fifteen years. Industry went from peak prosperity to utter
ruin.
The ultimate downfall of coffee was caused by
the spread of coffee leaf disease: The
fungus, which destroyed the Ceylon coffee industry. In 1886 the Ceylon coffee industry was for
all practical purposes dead
However, the establishment of coffee industry
help to the later development of the tea and rubber plantations in the
country. The plantation monopolized the
centre of stage throughout colonial period.
Basically all these characteristics remained at least up to independence
in 1948. British ownerships and management, provision of finance,
large-scale-factory style-operation, Indian Labour, Capital equipment, estate
supplies, and even food for the labour force and British Market for the product
etc. In short, fundamentals laid by the
coffee plantation did not alter during the growth of future plantation crops
like Tea, Rubber in Ceylon.
It is also important to see how the British
acquired land for initial establishment of coffee and the expansion of other
plantation crops in the latter. At the
beginning in 1833 it was only 146 acres were acquired which rose very rapidly
to 78,686 acres were sold to Britishes in the 1840's. Coffee was planted around 276,000 acres
towards end of 1847. Land for plantation
development was purchased from the Crown.
With the Conquest of the Kandyan Kingdom in 1815 all the land in the central
part of the island that was not at that time occupied together with the forestland
was taken over by the Crown. The state
defined "all forest, waste, unoccupied, or uncultivated lands" to be
Crown land and converted them to establish the plantation in the hilly areas.
The issues related to Crow Land acquired for
plantation of tea rubber have been vary controversial. Please read Asoka
Bandarage: pp 87-97, Nihal Perera: pp 64-69, de Silva: p 297 etc.
However, the British investors acquired land
for plantation cultivation in the hilly area.
Initially, the land was of little alternative use and sold to British
investors at nominal price of five shillings per acre. In 1844, restrictions were imposed on the
sales of land, and no land would be sold before being surveyed and that the
price was raised to 20 shillings.
However, the value of land had been declined as a result of downfall of
the coffee industry. But it tuned around
during the tea cultivation,
Tea was one of the several alternatives to
coffee. (Cinchona was first alternative
and planted in 39,000 acre in 1885.
However the British market was not favourable, hence they tried to plant
Cocoa, but suitable land for cocoa was limited.
The tea plantation followed the pattern of estate system, which was set
up to grow coffee, with the minor refinements.
In many cases the same land, capital and labour were converted to plant
tea.
Early experiments of growing Tea plants in the
1840s were not encouraging. But in the
1860s new variety of tea plants from Assam was imported which was quite
successful. The area planted with tea rose to around 20,000 acres in the
1870s. Production cost around Rs. 0.35
per pound of tea fetch Rs. 0.75 in 1880s and tea remained highly profitable.
The Ceylon Tea industry was confined to large
estates. They were European-run and owned by Europeans. The constant attentions of a trained and
dedicated supervisory staff and labour are required for tea cultivation. The labour that they recruited for coffee had
continued to work in the plantation.
The favoured position of Ceylon tea in the
market stood in good stead even during the depression in the 1930s. Ceylon tea was inexpensive than any other tea
in the world market till the1970s.
Despite the residual supplies of land, labour
and capital remaining unused after the coffee blight, the tea industry required
for more resources for expansion. Unlike
coffee, tea can be grown at a much wider range of altitudes. New Crown lands paved way to meeting this
rising demand. As for labour, more Tamil labour was immigrated.
Smallholders in tea also held a position
similar to that occupied by the predecessors in 1935, there were nearly 70,000
tea smallholdings, which accounted for around 11% of total cultivated land in
the country.
Establishment of Rubber and Coconut Plantations
The weak prices for tea which prevailed in the
early years up to 1907, influenced some planters to seek for alternative
crops. Rubber was demanded in larger
quantities by industrial countries and it was planted just 1750 acres in 1900
and went to some 150,000 acres in 1907.
By 1913 rubber earned three times as much foreign exchange as tea. In 1917 the industry enjoyed war-inflated
prices. Acreage, output, and exports all rose steadily throughout the decade of
the 1920's.
It should be noted that rubber is naturally
much more smallholder-oriented industry than tea. About 40% of Ceylon Rubber Land in the 1920's
were less than 100 acres. Much of the
rubber land located in middle altitudes and it is closer to the peasant
economy. Labour requirement for Rubber
cultivation is less than tea and not on the regular basis. It is heavily relied on casual workers both
from estate and adjoining villages.
Coconut
cultivation plays a vital role in the village economy and it became third
modern export plantation crops in Ceylon.
It has multiple uses and endlessly use by the villages. Smallholders in the country dominated the
coconut industry. Indeed five production
of coconut are commercial value, which are traded internationally: Copra, oil,
poonac, desiccated coconut and coir major product items. However, coconut never came under any
international regulatory agreement, which did tea and Rubber. It should be
noted that the area under coconut comparatively larger than tea and rubber and
almost always locally owned. Coconut
acreage and production expanded steadily up to World War I and it was a leading
supplier of desiccated coconut in the 1920s.
However, its position was threatened by the entry of Philippines in the
late twenties.
Economic Growth
The
modern economic development established in the 1840's to World War II was
dominated by the growth of estates. The
county can be divided into number of phases of economic growth.
1845-1870 - High prise
fetch by Coffee and establishment of estates.
1840-188 - Coffee
decline
1888-1913 - The rise of
Tea and Rubber up to World War II
1913-1929 - War, Peace
and prosperity
In each of these periods, the country depended
heavily on the estate sector. Total
exports rose and fell with coffee. Rise
of the tea industry is mainly responsible for the upward movement of export
volume at a 6.2 percent annual rate. In
1929, coffee, tea, and rubber were the leading sector anand it proved the
engine of growth for the economy.
Indeed, world demand has been increasing rapidly in the inception of the
industry.
The following table shows the export income
between 1891-1959.
Year
|
Tea
|
Rubber
|
Coconut
|
Other
|
Total
(Rs. 000,000)
|
1891
|
52.3
|
-
|
10.7
|
-
|
58
|
1913
|
37.7
|
26.3
|
9.6
|
16.4
|
233
|
1939
|
57.3
|
20.5
|
13.3
|
17.6
|
328
|
1954
|
65.1
|
16.0
|
12.2
|
6.7
|
1,724
|
1959
|
58.9
|
16.8
|
13.7
|
10.6
|
1,773
|
Cited in Snodgrass (1966), Ceylon an Export
Economy in Transition, Yale University p. 54.
* Combination of Coconut Oil, Copra and
Desiccated Coconut.
Major Reference
Beckford G. L. (1972), Persistent
Poverty under development in Plantation Economies of Third World, Oxford
University Press, London.
Courtenay, P. P. (1969), Plantation
Agriculture, G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., London.
Perera Nihal (1998) Society and
Space, Colonialism, Nationalism and Post colonial Industry in Sri Lanka,
Transition Asia and Asian America.
Westview Press.
Sanderatne Nimal, (1983),
Plantation Agriculture: Economic Opportunities and Challenges, Staff Studies,
Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
Snodgrass R. Donald, (1966), Ceylon:
An Export Economy in Transition, Yale University, Illinois.
Thanks
A. S. Chandrabose
Thanks
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