CDS (II) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 82 of 120

Correct — D, Plantation farmers rear the animals for sale. Plantation agriculture is a crop system, not a livestock system. It means a large estate given over to a single perennial cash crop — tea, coffee, rubber, sugarcane, oil palm, banana, cocoa — grown for sale in distant markets, usually with a processing unit on the estate itself. Rearing animals for sale is a different activity altogether, commercial livestock rearing or ranching, which occupies extensive grasslands rather than intensive estates and is organised on completely different lines. The other three statements are standard descriptions of the system: plantations are scientifically managed, with technical staff, planting material, fertiliser schedules and disease control; they need heavy capital because a perennial crop takes years to yield and the estate must carry roads, labour housing and a factory; and in their colonial origin, and in much of Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America still, ownership has been foreign while the labour force is local.

• (a)Plantation farm estates are scientifically managed. — True of the system. Estates run on managed inputs, selected planting material and trained supervisory staff — one of the features that separates a plantation from peasant cash-cropping.
• (b)Plantation farming requires heavy capital outlay. — True. A perennial crop yields only after several years, and the estate carries roads, housing and processing plant, so the capital demand is high before any revenue arrives.
• (c)Plantation farm lands have mainly foreign ownership and local labour. — True as a general description of the system, whose modern form began under colonial rule. Indian estates have largely passed into domestic ownership, but the statement describes the type, and the question asks which one is not correct.

Plantation agriculture is one of the commercial forms of primary activity: a single perennial cash crop, a large estate, high capital, a long gestation before returns, a large and often migrant labour force, and processing on site or nearby. It grew out of European colonial enterprise in the tropics and remains concentrated there — tea in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala; coffee in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu; rubber in Kerala and the north-east; oil palm in Malaysia and Indonesia; cocoa in West Africa; banana in Central America.

Every 'which is not correct' item rewards reading the four options as a set first. Three of these describe the same thing from different angles — management, capital, ownership — and the fourth changes the subject from crops to animals. That switch, not any subtle qualification, is the error. It is worth holding the contrast in mind because the two systems are opposites in almost every respect: a plantation is intensive on a fixed estate with one crop, while commercial livestock rearing is extensive over large ranches with one animal product. The colonial ownership pattern in the third option has shifted over time in India, where most estates are now domestically owned, so treat it as a description of the type rather than a claim about every estate today.

• A plantation grows a single perennial cash crop on a large estate, for sale in distant markets.
• Capital requirements are heavy because the crop yields only after years and the estate must carry processing and worker housing.
• Estates are scientifically managed, with technical staff and controlled inputs.
• The modern plantation system began as colonial enterprise, which is the origin of the foreign-ownership and local-labour pattern.
• Rearing animals for sale is commercial livestock rearing or ranching — extensive, grassland-based, and not part of plantation agriculture.

• Rejecting the foreign-ownership statement because Indian estates are Indian-owned today; the statement describes the system's type.
• Confusing plantation cropping with commercial grain farming, which is annual and mechanised rather than perennial and labour-intensive.
• Forgetting that processing on or near the estate is part of what makes a plantation a plantation.

As a which-is-not-correct item where three options describe plantations and one describes a different farming system.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is not a plantation crop?

  • (a)Rubber
  • (b)Tea
  • (c)Wheat
  • (d)Coffee

  Answer(c) Wheat — an annual food grain grown on ordinary holdings, not a perennial estate crop grown for distant markets.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Processing of the produce on or near the estate is a normal feature of which one of the following farming systems?

  • (a)Shifting cultivation
  • (b)Plantation agriculture
  • (c)Nomadic herding
  • (d)Subsistence rice farming

  Answer(b) Plantation agriculture — tea factories, rubber sheeting units and coffee curing works sit on or beside the estate.