February i, 1883.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



625 



garded, or only attended to in a very small part. 

 What ngricultuie needs, is money. It 13 thought 

 that it begs alms, while what it needs ia the repre- 

 sentative of its own valne. To obtain this, it must 

 give the greiitest possible guarantee fur redtm^jtion. 

 We attempted to reform the moi tgago law, but the 

 Semite iu its wisdom rejected the project. What 

 we asked was to be able to maUe an anticipated 

 sale of our products. These mortgage titles would be 

 a true paper money ; capital now withheld would 

 seek them because coffee is the gold .of Brazil. 

 The state had everything to s^'i" "'"h this, :inil 

 it has not. yet been estimated how many thousands of 

 centos such an emissiun would amount to. Tliis 

 l^roji ct, however, was not only rejected, but it was 

 mad« impossible for the planters 10 move. The efforts 

 to establish banks through the law of 187.J have iueen 

 fruitless. Agricultural valu> b being depreciated and 

 the planters unable to move to obtain money, they 

 are handcuffed. They are tied to a post, and then 

 ordered to mirch. 



The planter has been reproached because he does not 

 adopt localized cultivation, because he devastates the 

 forests, because he does not import colonists. Coffee 

 must be planted in good siil, and localized cultivation 

 cost many time the value of the soil. If it is fol- 

 lowed m some parts of Kurope, there are others where 

 it is not. It requires laboreis which Br:izil does not 

 possess ; and while it may be adopted in some provinces 

 time will be required for its introduction into that of 

 Rio de J meiro. 



Even if these great enterprises were possible, where 

 is the money to come from with which to realize them. 

 The planter lacks money, lacks credit, and there are 

 no banks prepared to advance him money for a long 

 term with the exception of the. Bank of Brazil which is 

 bampereil by law and has too smull a capital to meet 

 the wants of the four neaiest provinces. The aids 

 promised eighteen years ago are still withheld. The 

 planter is asked to work harder, to condemn himself 

 to isolation, and to keep away from the city iu order 

 not to spend money. In the defence of his colleagues 

 the orator protests against this iufinuntion. Not 8U per 

 cent of the planters of Rio de J.ineiio know the city, 

 or spend inore time there than is ab.^oliitely necessary. 

 The Paulista planters live differently ; they frequent 

 the centres of population and this is perhaps 

 the reason of the greater progress of that center 

 of Brazilian activity. It is desirable that the 

 planters should know each other better, that 

 they should unite in clubs and associations 

 to treat of their mutual interests. 



The legislature grants thousands of contos in guar- 

 antees to railroads, without a proper calculation of 

 what they can produce. Hence the freights are ex- 

 cessive and weigh fatally on the planters On top of 

 all these evils came the fall in the price of coffee. 

 This is not a sign of death for the coffee industry, but 

 it is an evil that will not be immediately remedied. 

 The whole question reduces itself to being able to pro- 

 duce cheaply. 



The second address was given on the 1st inslunt by 

 Dr. Francisco Belisario, a deputy iu the General Assem- 

 bly, and a planter iu the province of .Minas Geraes, 

 and dealt wiih the present state of coffee cultivation. 

 Unlike his predecessor, the speaker is one ol those who 

 know more of politics than of the vital necessities of agri- 

 cultui'e; hence his exposition lacks those practical features 

 which the subject suggests. Tlie main points of his 

 address, as taken from the Gazela de Noticias, were as 

 follows: — 



The lecturer began by saying that a few days ago 

 he had teen a leading article in a newspaper of this 

 province, w hich, under another heading, discussed the 

 same subject as this conference. 



After describing the position of coffee planting, this 

 paper, in view of the competition which is develop- 

 ing .around coffe, and of its consumption being so 

 much below production, advised the planters to abandon 

 this product, unless they wished to see their property 

 seized upon by their cieiiitors. 



Well, this opinion was the reflex of the opinion of 

 a paper published in this capital. But; I would a»k, 

 have things alreiidy reached this pass? fan such 

 advice he followed ? 



In Brazil the coffee plantations represent the most 

 important national properly and if once they are 

 abandoned it will be impossible to re-establish them 

 in their primitive state except nl almost insuperable 

 difficulty and enormous expense. 



The crisis produced by the decline in the value of 

 coffee has become all the more serious on accounts 

 of the planters already being face to face with the 

 land and labor questions. Whence came this crisis 2 

 It came from the excess of production as has hap- 

 pened iu other countries, with the difference that 

 the increased production of Brazil arose from an- 

 other cause. 



When the law of the 28th September was voted, 

 the planters saw that the state of things which had 

 existed up to then could last on longer, and there- 

 fore, among other expedients to which they resorted 

 they opeued up new zones for their plantations. As 

 a natural result i' is evident that production must 

 increase extraordinarily, for the plantations were laid 

 out in virgin soil. 



Still other reajons came to increase that progress, 

 one of the principal and most recent being the absence 

 of frost in S. Paulo and the Paraliyba zone, the atisenoe 

 of drought, and the resources employed to kill the 

 animals which injured the plantations. 



Elsewhere I have already urged the government to 

 assist the planters at this trying time. Tlie result of 

 my efforts is known, and I will pass into other topics. 



Recalling the crisis which tugar-plauting underwent 

 some years ago, and the remedies then suggested, 

 such as labor-saving machinery, I would ask ; Can the 

 same remarks be applied to Coffee? The method 

 of cultivating coffee in Brazil has been imposed by the 

 fataliiy of ciicumstances ; not being able to augment 

 its yield, coffee has therefore sprung from the virgin 

 soil. 



I cannot agree with an illustrious Brazilian, who has 

 pronounced against the destruct on of the forests, and 

 criticised the means employed by the planters to reap 

 the great' st results from their laliours. In his opinion 

 the time has come for the planters to study the best 

 means of exchanging extended for restricted cultivation, 

 giving, in conectiou with this subject, important con- 

 sideration to the question of letting the soil lie fallow. 

 This is a nio.^t important point, for it relates to the 

 value of property in which enormous capital has been 

 invested, and which after ("some time does not repre- 

 sent the value it ought to on account of the exhaustion 

 of the soil. 



After some remarks about the use of fertilizers, on 

 laud and for crops, which, harvested in (ive weeks in 

 Ceylon, require six months to harvest in Brazil 

 on account of the difficulty of the work, entailing 

 an apprenticeship of at least two >ears, the lect- 

 urer proceeded to say that the qmstion of pruning 

 w.as of no slight impDitance to the coffee planter, 

 because very often the leading .«hoots wer r.-mived iu 

 the pruning, which was a source of incalculable loss. 

 He discussed at some length and praised the high stand- 

 ard reached by Brazil in the methods of preparing 

 coffee for market, and pronounced against the use of 

 coloring matters by the planters. Returning to trans- 

 port charf!(S, he asserted that the bag of coffee which 

 can be shipped hence to the Uniteil States for 600 

 reis by steamer and between 400 and 800 reis by sailing 



