FORESTS OF PORTO RICO. 13 



Land Utilization. 



Porto Rico is essentially an agricultural country and will undoubt- 

 edly continue as such. Of its commercial staple crops — sugar, 

 coffee, and tobacco — only the first two are important competitors of 

 the forest from an acreage point of view, tobacco occupying less 

 than 1 per cent of the insular area. Coffee cultivation is a most 

 satisfactory form of agriculture for the steep mountain slopes where 

 it is carried on and its replacement of the forest is usually justified, 

 for it exerts many of the beneficial influences of the forest and few 

 of the detrimental ones of the field crops. Sugar might be said to 

 offer little economic competition with forests, because it usually 

 occupies the more level and strictly agricultural soils. 



Cattle raising was early taken up, and there was formerly a very 

 considerable export trade in live stock, hides, and tallow. The total 

 live stock now on the island amounts to not more than 350,000 to 

 400,000 head, and there is no export trade whatever. Cattle and 

 horses make up nine-tenths of the stock (cattle alone three-fourths), 

 the larger part of which is work stock. These are, to a considerable 

 extent, used in the low country and are grazed in the pastures there. 

 There seems,, therefore, to be little economic justification for any 

 longer retaining the bulk of the cleared uplands in pasture. Their 

 partial or complete reforestation would add materially to the pro- 

 ductive wealth of the island. 



It is in the cultivation of native ground provisions — rice, yams, 

 and the like — that agriculture comes into closest contact with the 

 forest. From time immemorial, not only in Porto Rico but through- 

 out the Tropics the world over, the same primitive agricultural prac- 

 tice has prevailed. Wherever it is in operation the "conuco," or by 

 whatever other name x the method is known, is essentially the same. 

 Upon the area which it is desired to cultivate all the trees are felled 

 and set on fire. Sometimes the larger ones are killed by girdling 

 and allowed to remain standing. Clearing is most apt to occur 

 during the dry season, when conditions are most suitable both for 

 burning and for planting the new crop. Little or no care is taken to 

 control the fire and it often burns over a far greater area than is 

 wanted for cultivation. The beans, rice, or other ground provisions 

 are planted immediately following the burning, the ashes having 

 enriched and sweetened the soil. Little or no cultivation is given 

 the crop, and cropping seldom continues for more than 3 years. 

 Eventually, as the fertility of the soil decreases and grass, weeds, 

 and other volunteer growth get the upper hand, the area is aban- 

 doned and a new clearing made. 



1 What is known as the "conuco" in Porto Rico and other of the Spanish West Indies is known in the 

 Philippines as caingin, in India variously as jhurn, kumri, and khil, in Burma as juangya, and in Ceylon 

 as chena or hena. The same practice is also reported from the Sudan, Central America, and many other 

 parts of the Tropics. 



