Economic and financial section > Agricultural crisis > Volume 1

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The area under cultivation was extended in the case of all crops of importance, and
the yield was very considerably increased. The increase in the sugar-beet and potato
crop is particularly striking. Austrian agriculture at present supplies 45 per cent of the
country’s wheat requirements, and 80 per cent of its rye requirements. 1 he increase m the
production of sugar-beet has made it possible to raise the percentage of the country s sugai
requirements supplied from home sources from 6 to 60 per cent. Potatoes are already
being exported. In Lower Austria alone, fourteen new distilling companies have been
founded for the industrial exploitation of the surplus output of potatoes.
Great successes have also been obtained in the case of stock-raising and the dany
industry. Home-raised cattle and pigs supply the greater part of the countryside and
the small centres of consumption outside Vienna, and their share in the supply of Vienna
itself has been considerably increased. The proportion of home-raised live-stock in the
total meat supply of the Vienna market was as follows:
1925 193°
Per cent Per cent
Live cattle in St. Marx I9 44
Beef in the Grossmarkthalle I7 33
Live pigs in St. Marx 11
Pork in the Grossmarkthalle 47 52
Austria has made herself completely self-supporting as regards fresh milk. The
annual deliveries of home-produced milk to Vienna increased between 1920. and 1928
from 28 to 286 million litres. The increase in the Austrian production of milk is reflected
in the figures of the trade statistics. Between 1924 and 1929, the import of milk and other
dairy products fell from 40.1 to 9.1 million schillings, while the exports of these products
in the same period increased from 1.1 to 10.5 million schillings. . lhat is to say, the adverse
trade balance of some 40 million schillings was completely wiped out, and a favourable
trade balance created, in the course of six years. This expansion was largely due to the
establishment of 310 new co-operative dairy-farming and cheese-making companies.
In spite of the legitimate pride with which Austrian agriculture can point to its
success in increasing production, its satisfaction is not unmixed. Just at first, superficial
observers, deceived by the general shortage of foodstuffs in Europe and the consequences
of the inflation during the post-war period, did not perceive the menacing
were massing on the horizon. In a single year, price fluctuations, on a scale whicn before
the war was almost unknown, and marketing difficulties, now in this branch of agriculture
and now in that, introduced an element of growing uncertainty into the normal process of
agricultural production. The driving forces of the increasing pioduction had hardly
been developed and organised before anxiety in regard to the marketing of agricultural
products began to be felt, and these marketing difficulties have since then remained
permanent. The price level of agricultural products flunctuated and fell while the
general level of wages and the price of finished products increased. The so-called Preis-
schere ” (“ price scissor ”) phenomenon became daily more marked as the purchasing
'bower of agricultural products declined. _ . ,
While the cultivator by increased effort is continually wringing more out o. the soil,
he is obtaining less and less for that which he produces. He cannot fail to see the decline
in the demand for his products, and he cannot but observe that the consumer is being
compelled to pay a high price for products for which he himself receives but little
Briefly, the main features of the prevailing depression, the causes and effects of which
are closely related, are as follows:
1. Falling prices for agricultural products and rising costs of production;
2’ Reduced purchasing power of agricultural products (the phenomenon of
the “ Scissors ”);