Aerial shot along Dominican-Haitian border contrasts denuded hillsides of Haiti (on left) with forested hillsides of the Dominican Republic
Courtesy James P. Blair © 1987 National Geographic Society

An estimated 27,452 square kilometers, or 57 percent of the Dominican Republic's total territory of 48,442 square kilometers, was devoted to agriculture-related activities in the late 1980s. According to a soil survey conducted in 1985, 43 percent of the country's total area was moderately suited, or well-suited, for cultivation. The Cibao and the Vega Real regions, north and northeast of Santo Domingo, respectively, contained the republic's richest agricultural lands and produced most of the nation's food and cash crops, with the exception of sugar. Sugarcane cultivation centered on the coastal plains of the south and the east.

Data as of December 1989