loG ITALIAN SOMALILAXD - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



First we will speak of the concessions in Goscia, made at the outset, 

 on a method which was little empirical, when the idea of attracting Italian 

 capital to these regions necessarih' prevailed, no preliminary investigations 

 having been made. Moreover the capital at first sought was evidently ill 

 fitted to the development of an area of 5,000 hectares. And since local con- 

 ditions had been little studied concessions were not rationally mapped out, 

 the fact being forgotten that wooded and non-irrigable lands sometimes 

 made more than two thirds of a concession non-productive. 



It would have been better to grant 1,000 or at most 1,500 hectares of 

 land in conditions which would have allowed of their whole and equal cul- 

 tivation, without the enormous differences between one concession and ano- 

 ther stated to exist to-da3\ Not only would it have been easier to find the 

 capital necessary to these cultivable lands, but apportionment of the lands 

 most easih" cultivated would have allowed the capital, when once the first 

 trial had been made, to have been used for a harder matter, the develop- 

 ment namety of the lands of which the cultivation is laborious and costly. 



It was impossible that the first concessions should not suffer by this 

 primar}' defect in preparatory measures. They suffered not onl}^ from 

 lack of capital but even more from a lack of the technical knowledge in- 

 dispensable to such indtistrial crops as cotton. Such a history is common 

 to the beginnings of all colonies. Several enterprises thus failed, in spite 

 of all the ardour and the energ}- with which the pioneer colonists of So- 

 maliland endeavoured to establish themselves. 



Two concessions in particular, each of 5,000 hectares, deser\'e a special 

 examination and may be said to have survived and to have preserved some 

 elements of a serious success. They are the Societd italiana per imprese 

 coloniali and the Societd romana di colonizzazione in Somalia. The former 

 was formed by a group of Neapolitan and Milanese capitalists. When an 

 earlier enterprise went into liquidation it added excellent water-hoists 

 to its assets, and brought the vast plain of Bieja near Jumbo under cul- 

 tivation. Its works of captation and canalization are perfect and no doubt 

 as to the results they will 3'ield can be entertained. In 1911 the cotton 

 produced was sold in Itah" at the following prices which are hardly equall- 

 ed by the best Egyptian cotton : 



Sakellaridis Selected Abassi Mixed Afifi Abassi 



Liras 214 228 168 192 194 



As much as 155 liras a quintal was oft"ered for Upland cotton. 



In 191 2 thirty hectares were sown afresh ; and the plants of the previous 

 year had regerminated over fifty hectares and promised an abundant har- 

 vest, no trace of parasites having been discovered. 



Other hundred hectares, brought under cultivation and canalized in 

 1912, were sown in 1913. 



Since the necessary capital is not lacking this concession will certainly 

 be profitable for a long period. 



