Vineyards, Sugar, Tobacco, Potatoes, Oats

Vineyards

³⁷ An undoubted maxim in ancient agriculture and in all the modern wine countries was that the perfected vineyard was the most valuable part of the farm.

Columella says that the ancient Italian husbandmen disputed whether it was advantageous to plant new vineyards. Like a true lover of cultivation, Columella sided with planting new vineyards. He presents it as a very profitable improvement by comparing its costs and profits.

Such comparisons between costs and profits in new projects are commonly very fallacious, especially in agriculture. Had new vineyards been really profitable, there could have been no such dispute.

Even today, the profitability of vineyards is still controversial in the wine countries.

Their agricultural writers favour the vineyard.

In France, their opinions are supported by the proprietors of old vineyards who want to prevent the plantation of new vineyards.

To those proprietors, this profitability is made possible only by the laws which restrain the free cultivation of the vine.

In 1731, they obtained an order of council:

• prohibiting new vineyards,
• renewing old ones with certain conditions.

Its pretence was:

• the scarcity of wheat and pasture, and
• the super-abundance of wine.

But if this super-abundance were real, it would have discouraged new vineyards because it would reduce wine profits lower than the profits of wheat and pasture.

In France, wine is always more carefully cultivated than wheat, especially in the wine provinces of Burgundy, Guienne, and the Upper Languedoc.

The many workers employed in wine cultivation encourage the workers in wheat cultivation by affording a ready market for wheat.

To reduce wine to encourage wheat is most unpromising as discouraging manufactures to promote agriculture.

³⁸ When the rent and profit of the produce, which need more costly improvements, only compensate such costs, they are in reality regulated by the rent and profit of wheat and grass.

³⁹ Sometimes, the land for a certain produce is too small to supply the effective demand. The whole produce can be sold only to those willing to pay more than the natural price. The natural price is the price paid for the same produce in most other cultivated lands.

In this case only, the surplus of the price, after deducting the costs, bears no regular proportion to the like surplus in wheat or pasture.

The surplus price of such produce may exceed the surplus price of wheat or pasture in any degree. Most of this excess naturally goes to the landlord’s rent.

⁴⁰ The natural proportion between the rent and profit of wine and those of wheat and pasture happens only with common wine vineyards which can be grown on any soil.

Only the common land of the country can compete with common vineyards.

⁴¹ The vine is more affected by the difference of soils than any other fruit tree.

It derives a flavour from the soil which no culture or management can equal. This flavour is sometimes limited to a few vineyards.

The production of such wines falls short of the effective demand, raising its price. Its price varies according to the wine’s fashionableness and scarcity. Most of its price goes to rent.

The high price of wine in those carefully cultivated vineyards is the cause of this careful cultivation. Wine is so valuable that it forces the most careful attention.

A small part of this high price is sufficient to pay:

• the wages of its extraordinary labour
• the profits of its extraordinary stock

Sugar Prices

⁴² The sugar colonies in the West Indies may be compared to those precious vineyards.

Their produce falls short of the effective demand of Europe, raising their prices. Mr. Poivre was a very careful observer of the agriculture of South Vietnam.

He says that in South Vietnam, the finest white sugar commonly sells for 3 piasters the quintal or 162 pence. A ‘quintal’ there weighs an average of 175 Paris pounds.

The quintal reduces the price of the English hundred weight to around 96 pence. 96 pence is not:

• 1/4 of the price commonly paid for the brown or muscovado sugars imported from our colonies
• 1/6 of the price for the finest white sugar.

Most of the cultivated lands in South Vietnam produce wheat and rice, the food of the people there.

The prices of wheat, rice, and sugar, are there probably in the natural proportion. Their prices compensate the landlord and farmer according to the original expence of improvement and annual cultivation.

But in our sugar colonies, sugar prices bear no proportion to the produce of rice or wheat fields in Europe or America.

A sugar planter expects that the rum and molasses to defray his cultivation costs. His sugar should be all clear profit. If this is true, then a wheat farmer should defray his expences with the chaff and straw. The grain should be all clear profit. London merchants frequently buy waste lands in our sugar colonies.

They expect to cultivate them with profit through agents despite= the great distance, and the uncertain returns from the defective justice in those countries. Nobody will attempt to cultivate the most fertile lands of Scotland, Ireland, or North American provinces even if there might be more regular returns from their better justice system.