Cash crops are agricultural crops that are planted for the purpose of selling on the market or for export to make profit, as distinguished from subsistence crops planted for the purpose of self-supply of the farmer (like livestock feeding or food for the family).
Examples of typical food and non-food cash crops are cereals, oilseeds, coffee, cocoa, sugar cane, vegetables and fruits (e.g. avocado and oranges), peanuts, cotton and tobacco. Especially in developing countries, cash crops are grown on a large scale and sometimes compete with land use and resource requirements of the local community. As major cash crops are influenced by global market prices, farmer's revenues are depending on them.
Related concepts
Source
- GEMET - General Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus - Definition 'cash crop', online article from 13.2.2020.
- Zimmer, Y et al. (2015): Agri benchmark Cash Crop Report 2015, Thünen Institute, Braunschweig, Germany.
- Homepage of agri benchmark, a global, non-profit network of agricultural economists, advisors, producers and specialists in key sectors of agricultural and horticultural value chains.
- Homepage of Thünen Institute about cash crops, an institute that conducts research for policy makers and the society regarding agricultural economy topics (beyond others).
