The following table shows the number of farms of various sizes in the Island to-day:
| Farms under 5 acres | 20,650 |
| Farms from 5 to 9 acres | 11,309 |
| Farms from 10 to 19 acres | 10,045 |
| Farms from 20 to 49 acres | 8,872 |
| Farms from 50 to 99 acres | 3,728 |
| Farms from 100 to 174 acres | 1,726 |
| Farms from 175 to 499 acres | 1,502 |
| Farms from 500 to 999 acres | 332 |
| Farms of 1000 acres or more | 207 |
Of the owners and tenants of these farms 44,521 are white and 13,850 are colored. About 95 per cent of all the owned farms are free from mortgage. The average size of the farms in Porto Rico is about 35¾ acres.
The experience of European countries has been that large farms, in a densely populated country are detrimental to the community welfare, because the holding of such farms by a few condemns a large percentage of the population to a dependent condition. As the number of farms decreases, the number of salaried laborers must increase, and as this floating population increases, there is also a tendency for crime to increase, as the man who has no responsibilities as a proprietor of land often lacks the fundamental stimulus to make him observe the laws of his country. The landowner, having obtained even a small parcel of land, has an incentive for hard work, wishing to better his financial condition, while the dependent salaried man, with no visible stimulus for saving, tends to spend his money as fast as it is earned and seldom accumulates any property. To such an extent is the possession of land regarded as a benefit to the individual and an incentive toward good citizenship, that in some European countries the government has made arrangements to loan money to worthy young men for the purchase of small farms on the ground that the government gains a desirable citizen every time that it creates a landholder. The Government of Porto Rico might well take some steps to encourage dependent laborers to accumulate property, either by means of loans to those who desire to purchase property, or by opening up government land for settlement under the Homestead Act.
The rise in the price of land and the fact that the greater part of the land of Porto Rico is devoted to industries which are most productive when conducted on a fairly large scale, has tended to the accumulation of large tracts of land, and legal measures should be enacted against the accumulation of tracts of land of more than 100 or 200 acres, and providing for the distribution of any large tracts in case of the death of the present owner:
At the present time a good deal of the foodstuffs of Porto Rico is imported into the Island while if there were more widely extended division of the land into a large number of small farms, the production of these foodstuffs could be greatly increased, although, of course, this would tend to decrease the production of certain other crops which at present claim the chief attention of the people of Porto Rico.
According to the Report of the Governor of Porto Rico for 1914-15, the division of land among the various industries, as well as the average value per acre of land for each of the industries, is shown by the following table:
| Average value | ||
| Crop | Acreage | per acre |
| Cane | 211,110 | $106.95 |
| Coffee | 165,170 | 61.60 |
| Tobacco | 18,040 | 80.81 |
| Pineapples | 3,761 | 105.24 |
| Citrus fruits | 5,274 | 121.78 |
| Coconuts | 6,088 | 118.33 |
| Minor fruits | 102,274 | 27.53 |
From this table we see that certain industries, such as the cultivation of pineapples or citrus fruits, which can be carried on successfully on relatively small farms, bring practically as high a return per acre as does the production of sugar cane, which is essentially a large farm product. This argument would not necessarily do away with the cultivation of sugar cane, but would tend to increase the cultivation of other crops wherever and whenever the soil and climatic conditions would permit.