Getting the Most Out of an Acre 



The most intensively cultivated region in Europe is that 

 part of the province of Valencia, Spain, which lies be- 

 tween the mountains and the Mediterranean. It has a 

 rainfall of only about seventeen inches a year, but so 

 fertile is the soil and so skilled are its workers that it 

 produces crops worth an average of $640 an acre. There 

 are districts where 100 acres support 160 families and 

 where single families live on the product of four-tenths of 

 an acre. Farms are rented at about $30 an acre, and the 

 tenant pays 48 cents an hour for pumped water, which 

 flows in a stream of 200 gallons a minute. Almost all 

 farming is done by hand, as minute attention is given to 

 crops and even to individual plants. The average produc- 

 tion of the principal crops is as follows, in metric tons of 

 2,204 pounds: Oranges, 400,000 tons; olives, 65,000; 

 carob beans, 72,000; peanuts, 13,500; melons, 36,000; 

 grapes, 87,000; peppers, 12,000; tomatoes, 27,000; wheat, 

 62,000; barley, 18,000; corn, 38,000; rice, 200,000. 



Denmark contains only some 15,000 square miles. It 

 maintains 2,500,000 persons and exports annually about 

 $150,000,000 worth of butter, bacon and eggs. Danish 

 butter invariably brings the highest price of any offered 

 in the British market, and the quantity of these three 

 exports is maintained equally with its quality, summer 

 and winter. 



Dr. Maurice Francis Egan, our Minister to Denmark, 

 says: "Today the Danish farmer buys nothing individu- 

 ally. He uses no seeds till they have been tested by the 

 experts furnished by the co-operative society. He buys 

 his fertilizers, soya beans from Manchuria, cotton and 



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