In the size of holdings there is the same difference between the north and south of Portugal as between Galicia and Andalucía in Spain. In Minho the land is all dividing walls and hedges round diminutive fields, the average size of holdings being under an acre, and many of them mere patches the size of a pocket handkerchief. In 1908 for 5,423,132 inhabitants the number of holdings was given as 11,430,740! “And if it is considered that this division is increased in, and almost confined to part of the centre and to the north, the extent of the evil will be clear. I know of many proprietors who, to obtain a total rent of fifteen or twenty escudos,[7] have over a hundred properties scattered over the parish, the rent of some of them representing fractions of a halfpenny.... In many parishes of the north there are olives, chestnut-trees and oaks in the property of one person but belonging to someone else, and sometimes these trees are divided between more than one owner.”[8]
Large Estates.
In Alemtejo the average size of a property is forty or fifty times greater than in the north, properties of 20,000 acres being not unknown. Alemtejo, under the Romans flourishing with corn, has large tracts of waste land, and when the land is cultivated modern machinery is rarely in use. When introduced by the owner of the land it is allowed to fall out of use, if possible, by the workmen, and at harvest time one has the picturesque sight of an interminable row of labourers at work without any of the noise and bustle of machinery. It has been suggested that some of the emigrants from the north of the country should be encouraged to go to Alemtejo instead of Brazil, and that the cultivation of seven or eight hundred more acres of Alemtejo as corn-land would put an end to the importation of corn which now drains the country of hundreds of thousands of pounds yearly, and seems to belie the undoubted fact that Portugal is above all an agricultural country. There are difficulties in the way of the scheme, since Alemtejo is a little too near home to form the Eldorado of the peasant of Minho and Traz os Montes. Moreover, if a part of Alemtejo were subdivided into small holdings for peasant colonists, whatever advantages were given to them the probability is that the holdings would gradually accumulate in the hands of one or two persons and form a few more Alemtejan montes and herdades. At least this was the result of a similar experiment in Andalucía.
Irrigation.
There is also the difficulty of water, Alemtejo more than the rest of Portugal standing in need of irrigation (artesian wells), although irrigation is welcome to agriculture throughout the country in view of the long summer droughts. Given water, vegetation of all kinds grows and prospers with marvellous rapidity in this land of hot sun and warm air.
Afforestation.
A requirement that goes hand in hand with irrigation is that of afforestation. It is true that woods cover above 22 per cent. of the total area of Portugal, which is double the average in Spain and two-thirds of the average in Europe. The cultivated area was given as 5,068,454 hectares in 1906, the uncultivated as 3,842,186. Trees were calculated to occupy some 1,700,000 hectares,[9] and most of these trees are of a valuable kind. Those of widest extension are pines (about 430,000 hectares[10]), evergreen oaks (azinheiras: 416,000 hectares), cork-trees (366,000[11]), and olives (329,000). Chestnuts cover some 84,000 hectares, and oaks 47,000.[12] But, especially in Traz os Montes, Alemtejo, and the Serra da Estrella, there is plenty of scope for afforestation. In the latter, which compares so unfavourably with the well-wooded Serra do Gerez, something has been done. Near Manteigas about 2,000 acres have been afforested (chiefly with pine and oak). In 1913 alone some four hundred bushels of acorns were sown. Altogether since the law of 1901, which placed the woods under the Department of Public Works, some 12,000 acres have been afforested[13] by the State, and private individuals are said to afforest almost as many acres annually, the State selling 30,000 kilos (at threepence the kilo)[14] of pine seed yearly. The State itself possesses comparatively little land, and the town councils have shown no inclination to be dispossessed of their commons. The more enlightened Portuguese from King Diniz onwards have always been keenly alive to the advantages of afforestation, but the more remote town councils have done nothing to counteract the destruction of trees at the hands of the peasants.[15] At the new annual “Festival of the Tree” trees are planted throughout the country by the school-children. The yield of a hectare of the famous Leiria pine woods is estimated at four milreis, and the expense at one milreis, giving a net profit of about twelve shillings. This would be increased by easier and cheaper means of transport.
A FARMER
Roads.