But if the Government encouraged the sugar industry with one hand, with the other it checked its development, together with that of other agricultural industries appropriate to the island, by means of prohibitive legislation, monopolies, and other oppressive measures.  The effects of this administrative stupidity were still patent a century later.  Bishop Fray Lopez de Haro wrote in 1644:  " ...  The only crop in this island is ginger, and it is so depreciated that nobody buys it or wants to take it to Spain....  There are many cattle farms in the country, and 7 sugar mills, where the families live with their slaves the whole year round.”

Canon Torres Vargas, in his Memoirs, amplifies the bishop’s statement, stating that the principal articles of commerce of the island were ginger, hides, and sugar, and he gives the location of the above-mentioned 7 sugar-cane mills.  The total annual produce of ginger had been as much as 14,000 centals, but, with the war and excessive supply, the price had gone down, and in the year he wrote (1646) only 4,000 centals had been harvested.  He informs us, too, that cacao had been planted in sufficient quantity to send ship-loads to Spain within four years.  The number of hides annually exported to Spain was 8,000 to 10,000.  Tobacco had begun to be cultivated within the last ten years, and its exportation had commenced.  He pronounces it better than the tobacco of Havana, Santo Domingo, and Margarita, but not as good as that of Barinas.

The cultivation of tobacco in Puerto Rico was permitted by a special law in 1614, but the sale of it to foreigners was prohibited under penalty of death and confiscation of property.[69] These and other stringent measures dictated in 1777 and 1784 by their very severity defeated their own purpose, and the laws, to a great extent, remained a dead letter.

The cultivation of cacao in Puerto Rico did not prosper for the reason that the plant takes a long time in coming to maturity, and during that period is exceedingly sensible to the effects of strong winds, which, in this island, prevail from July to October.  The first plantations being destroyed by hurricanes, few new plantations were made.

Of the other staple products of Puerto Rico, the most valuable, coffee, was first planted in Martinique in 1720 by M. Declieux, who brought the seeds from the Botanical Garden in Paris.  The coco-palm was introduced by Diego Lorenzo, a canon in the Cape de Verde Islands, who also brought the first guinea-fowls; and, possibly, the plantain species known in this island under the name of “guineo” came from the same part of the world.  According to Oviedo, it was first planted in Santo Domingo in 1516 by a monk named Berlangas.

Abbad gives the detailed agricultural statistics of the island in 1776, from which it appears that the cultivation of the new articles introduced was general at the time, and that, under the influence of climate and abundant pastures, the animal industry had become one of the principal sources of wealth for the inhabitants.