When the Commission said that the British Caribbean colonies were established for the sole purpose of producing tropical commodities for export to Britain, it restated what John Stuart Mill had said more than a hundred years earlier that the Caribbean colonies were places where England found “it convenient to carry on the production of sugar, coffee, and a few other tropical commodities” (Mill [1848] 2003, 249), commodities that it was unable to produce domestically. Mill added that little agricultural production was undertaken in the colonies except staples and they were sent to England (ibid.). In short, England established its Caribbean colonies to be global agricultural production platforms.

A global agricultural production platform is an overseas unit that is established to produce a commodity or commodities that a nation cannot produce domestically or cannot produce in sufficient quantities to satisfy domestic demand. It may also be established if a commodity can be produced at significantly lower costs abroad than at home. The land used to produce the commodity may be owned by a foreign corporation, or a foreign corporation may sometimes contract with local farmers to be the sole buyer of the commodity, as was the arrangement between Geest and banana producers of the Windward Islands. The commodity or commodities are exported—an insignificant amount of the commodity may be used domestically—either for consumption or as intermediate goods. This kind of agricultural activity creates minimal economic linkages within the economy where the global agricultural production platform is located, although such activity may create significant linkages between the local economy and an overseas economy. Moreover, the foreign corporation or the foreign monopsonist invests a minimal amount of the economic surplus in the local economy.

It is likely that some agricultural regions in a large continental economy, whose varied climate and soil permit a highly diversified agricultural structure of production, may have many features of a global agricultural production platform. The agricultural production platform in such economies may be owned by individuals or firms that are resident outside the region, and it may supply unprocessed agricultural commodities to firms located outside the region, thus forming linkages not within the region where it is located but between the region and the rest of the larger economy.