In some regions, like Burma and the Gold Coast, colonial promotion of cash crops for trade benefited the farmers who participated in the system.
In other regions, like the Netherlands East Indies, cash-crop agriculture was forced on the local population by the colonial power, burdening the people and contributing to a wave of famines.
Cash-crop agriculture did lead to some social changes, as the cultivation of crops for markets and wage labor on plantations that were set up to grow cash crops shifted normal labor patterns.
