Chapter 2


 SCALE OF PRODUCTION OF AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES


 In the last section we discussed the general pattern of land use in the West Indies as
we believe it to have been in 1958 and as we expect it to be if our projections are a fair
picture of the future. Tables 9a to 9d illustrate this broad land use pattern, but in these
tables we show crop land as a total. In this chapter we shall discuss the breakdown of
crop land into the various crops and also discuss some figures for populations of com-
mercial trees and livestock. Following this discussion of scale of production, we shall
in the next chapter discuss intensity of production and in the following one, total supply.
It should be noted that the tables relevant to this and the following two chapters, Tables
11 to 20, are arranged under commodities. This facilitates the assessment of the scale
effect and the intensity effect on total supply.

 First, however, we draw attention to Tables 10a-d, which show how the total crop land
in each territory is made up. These totals are derived from already published censuses
and surveys (see Refs. G1 to G4) and from compilation of published data made at the In-
stitute of Social and Economic Research. Where we have obtained more up-to-date figures
in the course of making commodity studies, we have substituted these.

 It will be noted that the figure of total crop land does not agree with the aggregated
 acreages for the individual crops. Crop land is defined as: "Land under tree crops and
 medium and short term crops, land in process of preparation for crops or normally
 cropped but fallow. "

 In the Jamaica figures we find that the aggregate of land under the various crops is
 greater than the total of crop land. This is mainly because there is extensive intercropping
 in coffee, cocoa, bananas, coconuts and more particularly among roots and vegetables and
 fruits mainly consumed domestically. In Trinidad and Tobago there is less intercropping
 so that the difference is smaller. In British Guiana, known totals for rice and sugar are
 given for past years, while data for other crops was taken from the 1952 census in which
 a reconciliation had already been made.

 For the Windward Islands, Leeward Islands and Barbados we find that the aggregate
 acreage of individual crops is lower, not higher, than the figure of total crop land, in
 spite of the fact that some intercropping takes place (although not as extensively as in Ja-
 maica). The difference in those totals is thought to be due mainly to the fact that the 1956-
 58 sample surveys of the Windward Islands omitted some crop land then in fallows, and may
 have omitted a number of small lots under crops. These differences underline some of the