Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/18

8 thirty-eight per cent of the number of farms are of less than one hectare, and this thirty-eight per cent includes only 2.2 per cent of the entire area, mere dots of land, more suited for residences than farming. The holdings from one to ten hectares included 46.5 per cent of the number and 22.9 per cent of the area; those from ten to forty hectares, 12.8 per cent of the number and 29.9 per cent of the surface; and the larger farms, of more than forty hectares, only 2.5 per cent in number and forty-five per cent of the area. So that 84.7 per cent of the number of farms covers just one fourth of the total area under cultivation. When this feature of land holding is combined with very careful and intelligent agricultural methods, another proof of strength is developed. Stress is laid by observers on the continued increase of the yield per acre of wheat, due to the application of better methods and science, and, as is believed, to the use of better fertilizers, which had rendered the soil less sensitive to atmospheric variations. To this march of scientific agriculture there is no end, and with the more general use of discoveries it is possible to conceive that France in wheat will be able to hold her own.

In the production of wheat the position of France is peculiar. Other countries of Europe, like Holland and Belgium, obtain a larger yield per acre, and even Germany gives a higher yield; but no country produces so many bushels in proportion to its population, or approaches the record of France—more than seven bushels per capita. The second in rank is Italy, with only five bushels, and the neighbors of France on the north, Belgium and the Netherlands, grow only 3.5 and 1.3 bushels respectively. France is therefore more independent of foreign supplies of wheat than her continental rivals in trade and industry, Russia and Hungary excepted. It has been a conviction with French statesmen that, possessing no command over the sea, it would be suicidal to permit France to become dependent for food upon foreign and possibly rival powers. This conviction has influenced the commercial policy of France, for the Government has ever given a ready ear to the demands of the agriculturist, and has now adopted protection to the farmer as a settled policy. Where duties on imports have not been granted, bounties on production are given, and only in the great raw materials of industry, like wool, have the proposals of duties, revenue or protective, been set aside. It remains to be seen whether the colonial policy of France will modify this tendency of legislation. In Algeria she holds a country capable of great development in wheat, but Algeria is not tempting to the French farmer, who prefers his smaller holding at home. The more distant colonies as yet play no part in supplying France with this important grain, but are rather dependent upon the mother country for everything—a penalty