Author: United States Department Of Agriculture
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Published: 2018-01-12
Total Pages: 30
ISBN-13: 9780428871864
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Excerpt from Foreign Agriculture, Vol. 7: A Review of Foreign Farm Policy, Production, and Trade; November 1943 The total population of the region amounts to about 25 million people. Egypt leads with over 16 million; Iraq follows with 4 million; Syria and Lebanon together have 3 million; and Palestine and trans-jordan, 2 million. Concentration per unit of cultivated area is extremely high in Egypt, about persons to the square mile; in Lebanon the average is about whereas it is only 70 in trans-jordan and 80 in Iraq. Aside from this peculiar pattern of concentration, a distinctive feature of the population is that over 75 percent are rural and dependent upon agriculture for a living. Most of the rural inhabitants are settled, living in compact villages. The fellahin and their animals leave the village in the morning and go to work in the surrounding fields. No isolated farmsteads exist between the villages. In addition to settled villagers, therural population consists of nomadic and seminomadic tribes. The former are on the move most of the year, following the seasons with their flocks, whereas the latter settle down for a short time during the planting and harvesting seasons. 'this transition from the one extreme of pure nomadism to the other extreme of permanent agricultural settlement, with mobility at a low minimum, has been taking place in that part of the world for thousands of years. At present one can readily observe such transition in action by moving inland a short distance from the narrow coastal plains, fertile river valleys, or oases, toward the interior plateaus and deserts. Another population aspect, which has a direct bearing upon the subject of this article, is that both the birth rate and the death rate are very high. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
