British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 374

CHAPTER IX.

162. It will be seen from the foregoing tables that although the individual settlements number only 44 out of 259 (or 17%) they occupy 41 % of the area and represent 54% of the total agricultural population. This is due to the fact that the few individual settlements are larger in area and population, as for example, those at Hadera, Rehovoth, Rishon le Zion and Petah Tikva. Further, individual settlers own 108,000 dunums of citrus groves as compared with 12,000 dunums owned by the other settlements; this greater share in the citrus industry, reflected as it is in the need for seasonal labour, attracts a proportionately greater population in the citrus belt.

163. The outstanding feature of the Jewish farm is the intensification and diversification of its production with a marked shift from the earlier practice of dry cereal farming to irrigated mixed farming. The farm is usually has ed on the production of irrigated fodder for the raising of improved breeds of dairy cattle and poultry and the growing of vegetables and fruits under irrigation. This form of cultivation involves considerable capital investment and recurrent expenditure. In contrast, the Arab farm is usually extensive and monocultural, devoted mainly to the growing of cereals, the yields of which depend upon the extent and distribution of the rainfall; the latter form of cultivation requires a relatively smaller capital and current expenditure. There is, however, a growing tendency in Arab areas to develop the cultivation of vegetables and fruits. Arab farmers also own about one half of the citrus orchards.

THE P.I.C.A. (Palestine Jewish Colonization Association).

164. Jewish agricultural colonisation during the past sixty years owes much to the pioneering of the late Baron Edmund de Rothschild whose activities date back to 1883. Since then some 450,000 dunums of land have been acquired either by him or the Association and they hate established some forty settlements with Ii population of over 50,000. It is estimated that about £P.15 million were expended by Baron de Rothschild and the P.I.C.A. in agricultural colonisation. The basic idea of the Rothschild system was to create a class of farmers who, as owners of their farmsteads, would constitute a peasant class rooted and attached to the soil. The farmer was required to repay only a small proportion of the initial investments for land, buildings, livestock and equipment. After repayment of the relatively small debt-the loans were usually for 50 years at a low rate of interest of from 1 to 3% per annum-he may dispose of his land and property as an independent and self-reliant farmer. Advantage has been taken of Government land settle-

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