<P> Sugar was the most important crop throughout the Caribbean, although other crops such as coffee, indigo, and rice were also grown . Sugar cane was best grown on relatively flat land that was near the coast, where the soil was naturally yellow and fertile; mountainous parts of the islands were less likely to be used for cane cultivation . </P> <P> In the mid-17th century, sugar cane was brought into what later became the British West Indies by the Dutch, from Brazil . Upon landing in Barbados and other islands, they quickly urged local growers to change their main crops from cotton and tobacco to sugar cane . With depressed prices of cotton and tobacco, due mainly to stiff competition from the North American colonies, the farmers switched, leading to a boom in the Caribbean economies . Sugar was quickly snapped up by the British, who used it in cakes and to sweeten teas . </P> <P> During the colonial period, the arrival of sugar culture deeply impacted the society and economy in the Caribbean . It not only dramatically increased the ratio of slaves to free men, but it increased the average size of slave plantations . Early sugar plantations made extensive use of slaves because sugar was considered a cash crop that exhibited economies of scale in cultivation; it was most efficiently grown on large plantations with many workers . As a result, black men and women were forcibly taken from Africa and made into slaves to work on the plantations . For example, before 1650 more than three - quarters of the islands' population was white . In 1680, the median size of a plantation in Barbados had increased to about 60 slaves . Over the decades, the sugar plantations became larger and larger . In 1832, the median - size plantation in Jamaica had about 150 slaves, and nearly one of every four bondsmen lived on units that had at least 250 slaves . </P> <P> For about 100 years, Barbados remained the richest of all the European colonies in the Caribbean . The colony's prosperity remained regionally unmatched until sugar cane production expanded in larger countries, such as Saint Domingue and Jamaica . As part of the mass sugar industry, sugar cane processing gave rise to related commodities such as rum, molasses, and falernum . </P>

Which of the following accurately describes labor on caribbean sugar plantations