IlS NOTICES RELATING TO AGRICULTUR.\L ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



FRANXE. 



THE DEPARTMENT FOR CIVIL AND MILITARY VEGETABLE GARDENS. 



This department was recently set up within the Ministry of Agricul- 

 ture, united to the Ministr\- of War, and was placed under the direction of 

 R. Maxinie Ducroq, president of the enterprise for workmen's gardens at 

 Lille. Its chief object is to provoke and encourage the formation of vast ve- 

 getable gardens on the abandoned lands : 



i) By means of the depots of arm}' corps and their sections, the sen-' 

 try-posts of territorials guarding roads and communications, and the hos- 

 pitals and other mihtary establishments, in which men are retained by 

 their duties and whence they cannot be sent away on leave or for agricul- 

 tural employment, but where none the less they dispose daily of some hours 

 of leisure ; 



2) Bj^ means of the civil population of large towns and the neigh- 

 bourhoods of these. 



In 1916, 5,622 militar}' vegetable gardens, having an approximate 

 total area of 2,000 hectares (i) and able to yield about 13 million francs (2) 

 a 3^ear wese formed by these means. 



In order largely to develop this first success, a staff of seventj- mobi- 

 lized men has been instructed at the Ministry of Agriculture and has been 

 commissioned to go through all France, encouraging by lectures, advice 

 and other measures the gardening by depots ; and it is hoped that the exis- 

 ting numbei of gardens will thus be multiplied by five or even ten in 1917. 



Besides vegetable gardens it was recommended that military piggeries 

 should be instituted, in order to utilize greasy water and other waste food. 

 Almost all the depots now keep pigs in this way, and some of them con- 

 stantly have in their sties about a hundred pigs, the meat of which does not 

 cost them more than 1.25 francs a kilogramme (3). 



The civil vegetable-gardens have also acquired a considerable impor- 

 tance. Nine recently formed committees share the task of cultivating the 

 lands attached to the fortifications of Paris in which 3,500 gardens have 

 been established. But the number of applications is much above this fi- 

 gure, and the project was conceived of causing some of the abandoned 

 lands in the neighbourhood of the citj'^ to be cultivated by the population 

 of Paris. A meeting of the mayors of the communes of the department 

 of Seine was therefore held at the Ministry of Agriculture on 22 Februaiy 

 1917 and was followed by the formation of several local organizing commit- 

 tees. Already analogous committees have been formed in a certain number 

 of these conmmnes to distribute their uncultivated lands among their in- 



(i) I hectare = 2.47 acres. 



(2) I franc = 9 ^/^d at par. 



(3) I kilogramme = 2 ^/g lbs. 



