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The Plantation in Malaysian Economic Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

P. P. Courtenay
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Extract

Plantations, which originated as agricultural enterprises within colonial economic systems and which came to be established particularly in tropical dependencies, have occupied an equivocal position in the economic development philosophies and plans of less developed countries. Their colonial origin and their traditionally export-oriented and often mono-cultural characteristics have subjected them to a wide range of adverse criticism, despite their undoubted earning capacity.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , September 1981 , pp. 329 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1981

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References

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11 Higman, B. W., “Plantations and Typological Problems in Geography”, Australian Geographer 11 (1969): 192–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Courtenay, P. P., “An Approach to the Definition of the Plantation”, Geographica Polonica 19 (1970): 81–91Google Scholar; Courtenay, P. P., Plantation Agriculture, 2nd ed. (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

12 The fact that some plantations may operate inefficiently does not invalidate the general argument.

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24 Excluding tea and coconuts, which are not included in subsequent references to plantation area in this paper. In 1975, these minor plantation crops occupied almost 20, 000 ha.

25 The “loss” of estate area by subdivision was partly compensated for by some new planting on reserve lands by “non-subdivided” estates. It is also likely that many subdivisions remained above the 40 ha/100 acre statistical threshold and thus technically remained plantations. This undoubtedly contributed t o the change in size distribution mentioned earlier.

26 The changes briefly summarized in these paragraphs are examined in more detail in Courtenay, P. P., “Some Trends in the Malaysian Plantation Sector, 1963–1973”, in Issues in Malaysian Development, ed. Jackson, J. C. and Rudner, Martin (1979)Google Scholar.

27 Lim, op. cit.

28 Production from rubber estates reached a peak of 673, 600 tons in 1973, from which there has since been a slight decline.

29 This tonnage was produced by factories on estates. A further 482, 667 tons were produced by factories off estates. Much of the fruit for this production would have originated on estates whose yielding oil palm area was as yet too small to support their own factory.

30 Including Japanese and Singaporean as well as European.

31 Lim, op. cit.

32 The east coast states were arguing for rubber planting as a key to regional economic development in the early 1960s when the official insistence was that rural areas should be relieved of their dependence oh rubber (Rudner, op. cit. ).

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38 Ibid.

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