With this setup it provides you with every crop possible including the cash crops in colonial era, but also the food will be enough to supply your entire island at least through the Colonial era if not multiple others. You do need to find a large area where every crop has some decent land, but this is almost always available on the random generated maps and most of the default maps. To make up for this we have 9 different types of farms all within radius of each other, granting an additional 80% bonus (10 for each farm not including the farm itself.) With this, each plantation will have an instant 90% efficiency bonus from the multiculture/ranch upgrade. This will stop the ground the plantation is on from decaying but with it comes a -40% efficiency handicap. Each plantation is a different crop and each is set to Multiculture mode.

It is a set of 9 plantations all based around the cattle ranch which provides a 10% bonus when the 2nd upgrade is unlocked (available in Colonial era).

This is how I like to start most of my sandbox games and getting my farms to above 100% efficiency.

Cow cheat tropico 1