Final answer:
The two main agricultural practices in the Caribbean rimland were plantation agriculture and cash crops. Plantation agriculture relied heavily on slave labor to grow crops for export, such as sugarcane and tobacco, while haciendas focused more on land ownership and subsistence farming on the mainland.
Step-by-step explanation:
The two main agricultural practices in the rimland areas of the Caribbean islands were plantation agriculture and cash crops. These areas, characterized by coastal access for European ships during the colonial period, developed plantations where crops like sugarcane, tobacco, cotton, and fruit were cultivated for export profits. The European demand for these cash crops led to a drastic transformation of the local societies and economies. Native food crops and the original Amerindian population, who suffered from diseases and colonial subjugation, were replaced by these lucrative crops and a labor force largely comprising African slaves, brought to work in the seasonal plantation labor system.
Plantations were typically owned by wealthy Europeans and were established with the primary goal of exporting goods for high profits. This system was successful in the rimland due to the introduction of technology and slave labor, which bolstered the capacity to cultivate and export cash crops to Europe.
Conversely, haciendas were more common on the mainland of the Americas, in places like Mexico and Central America. The hacienda system was not driven by export profits but rather by the acquisition of land for social status and a comfortable lifestyle. As a result, Plantations and haciendas were systematically different, with the former being cash crop-focused, export-oriented agricultural centers in the rimland, and the latter being estate-centered with subsistence crops on the mainland.