This product has now sufficient demand in foreign markets to warrant the revival of its cultivation as a remunerative exportable commodity of Venezuela.
During the year 1917-1918 the products exported from the agricultural zone of Venezuela amounted to $10,400,000; in this zone there is now invested $46,600,000. A presidential decree of March 12, 1917, created an experiment station of agriculture, live stock, and forestry with a garden of acclimatization to be located at Cotiza near Caracas. Its purposes were stated to be:
The study of improved methods of cultivating the agricultural products of the country; the introduction, selection and distribution of seeds; experiments in reforestation; preparation of reports upon nature of soil and most adaptable crops from each region, with practical work for the training of agricultural foremen and forest rangers.[11]
[11] Memoria del Ministerio de Fomento, 1918.
Other purposes are:
To maintain circulating agrarian libraries, to promote expositions, to form nurseries of exotic plants, to introduce new agricultural machinery and implements, and to supply all possible information and assistance to the country.
In the following table the amount of capital invested in Venezuela in the cultivation of its eight principal agricultural products is shown.[12]
| Coffee trees | $16,000,000 |
| Cacao | 13,000,000 |
| Balata and rubber | 2,000,000 |
| Cocoanut trees | 2,000,000 |
| Tobacco | 2,000,000 |
| Bananas | 500,000 |
| Cotton | 400,000 |
| Sugar cane | 11,500,000 |
| Total | $47,400,000 |