Cacao is a very good business, because there is seldom a surplus in world markets; a demand exists for every pound, and the populations of great centres seem to consume it in increasing quantities; it is a valuable food, against which as yet no analytical chemist has laid one of the charges that seem designed to warn us from most things that are agreeable to eat and drink.
Anyone accustomed to warm climates, with a little capital to invest, and able and willing to wait three or four years for his first returns, could do worse than to take up cacao planting in Brazil.
Agricultural methods in Brazil are in many regions quite primitive. When wild land is taken up, it is denuded by the axe of its big trees, and the small scrub disposed of by burning the land over. Frequently the next process is little more than that of making holes in the ground with a stick, dropping in seed, and waiting for it to come up: a fertile land, Brazil gets her crops with a minimum of trouble. That is all very well for the little owner of a small property, but it has already given way in more advanced districts to sound agricultural methods. Modern scientific agricultural implements of American and European make are commonly seen in the centre and south, but in the extreme north and the deep interior they are more rare. There is an excellent market for small, light hand ploughs, harrows and cultivators, for in some parts of the country, such as interior Rio, the land in the bottoms of valleys is very good, has been neglected because only coffee, planted on the hilltops, has pre-occupied the small farmer, but there is not sufficient flat space for the use of large motor or animal operated machinery. A campaign of agricultural instruction has been inaugurated for some years by the Department of Agriculture, some good statistics and maps and literature sent out, but perhaps less theory and more practical instruction is needed. A recent writer in the Estado de S. Paulo remarked upon this, rather caustically: “... instructions for the culture of squashes—plough the ground with a plough with a disc of such a number, harrow it with such or such a harrow, drill it with such or such a drill; afterwards fertilize it with so many tons of phosphate of lime, so many of potash, and a few kilos of powdered gold; cultivate it with such a cultivator, harvest the crop with such and such methods, and take it to market in a certain kind of motor-truck, et cetera, this ‘etcetera’ meaning that the farmer must hand over his farm to his creditors and go to hunt a job as sanitary inspector....”
Other countries have also suffered from a plethora of agricultural theory, but there is plenty of room for instruction of a practical character and several good agricultural schools in Brazil, notably that at Piracicaba, São Paulo, are leading the way.
BRAZILIAN FRUITS
There are many fine fruits in Brazil, unrecognized abroad, which may some day, with refrigerating spaces in outgoing vessels multiplied, find a way to international tables; there is already a pineapple export to Europe, arriving in time for Christmas, and Brazil’s sweet bananas are shipped to the Plate. But who realizes that Brazil is the native home of the finest oranges in the world? Bahia is the place of origin of the seedless orange; slips of this tree, taken to California, have created a tremendous daughter industry whose products are spread far and wide by steamer and train; there is no export from Brazil, the Bahian orange, which is greatly superior in size and flavour to the Californian, hardly creeping down the coast to the markets of Rio and São Paulo. There is room for a huge industry in growing and shipping in this direction, and some of the planters of California, trembling of nights when the frosts come and smudges have to be burnt—sometimes in vain, would do well to transfer their skill and energy to a land where frosts are unknown, land is cheap, and the best oranges known are produced without any great care or science.
MINING
Brazil was for more than a hundred years after the discovery of placer deposits in the interior the source of important gold exports; altogether she is estimated to have yielded gold worth more than a hundred million pounds sterling, but her fame diminished with the exhaustion of the gold-bearing river sands. It was easy enough to wash out gold grains with the bateia, but when it became necessary to seek mother lodes and to use machinery, native capital and technical skill were lacking. Two gold-mining companies are working today in Brazil, both British owned and operated, and both in the State of Minas Geraes. One, at Morro Velho, property of the S. João del Rey Mining Company, is worked at a depth of a mile and a quarter, pays dividends regularly, and is a standing tribute to British energy and skill: it is a magnificent social organization as well as an engineering triumph.
The second company of importance using modern equipment is that of Passagem, close to the old capital of Minas Geraes, Ouro Preto; it is excellently operated, but has not had equal good fortune with the Morro Velho mine. In 1916 Brazil’s gold exports, in bars, weighed 4,564,523 grams, were worth about £480,000, and went entirely to England, but Brazil subsequently forbade gold exports, and now takes over all the product.
A certain amount of Brazilian gold is absorbed internally every year by the excellent native goldsmiths, for the fabrication of special jewellery objects, but no estimate of the value is obtainable.