^20 WILD SPAIN. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 



OX SPANISH AGRICULTURE. 



I. — Cereals, Green Crops, etc. 



Around Spanish agriculture, as around other Iberian 

 industries, hangs a cloud of almost Oriental apathy. A 

 land which might be one of the granaries of Europe is 

 so neglected that, even with an import duty on corn, it 

 is barely self-supporting — indeed, during 1889, Spain 

 had to pay upwards of one million sterling for imported 

 wheat. 



Since the fall of Moorish dominion, the population of 

 Andalucia has fallen to less than half; large areas which 

 in Moorish days were smiling corn-lands, to-day lie 

 barren and unproductive, choked with brushwood — the 

 great southern despoblados, or deserts. 



Nearly one-half the entire land of Spain (to be exact, 45"8 

 per cent.) is without cultivation of any kind ; and of the rest, 

 the productive powers are but half utilized. The yield of 

 the best land in a favourable season rarely reaches forty 

 bushels per acre, and the average, taking one year with 

 another, may be placed at twenty ; while in Northumber- 

 land thirty bushels is an average, and fifty a not infrequent 

 yield. 



The three chief agricultural products of Spain are corn, 

 oil, and wine — of the latter, we treat more particularly in 

 another chapter. The corn-farms — each usually including 

 a certain proportion of olive-wood — extend from four or 

 five hundred acres up to large holdings of as many 



