Economic and financial section > Agricultural crisis > Volume 1

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for only 1,289,105,295 drachmae, granting no credits to most of the refugee families
settled as farmers, to whom the Autonomous Refugee Settlement Office, which was then
in operation, granted credits.
The Agricultural Bank supplied capital to only 286,493 agricultural undertakings,
which represents 44 per cent of their total number—i.e., at a low estimate, 650,000.
It will be seen from the foregoing that the funds at the disposal of the Agricultural
Bank of Greece are not sufficient completely to meet the requirements in short-term
agricultural loans, and it is to this fact that the Bank’s hesitation to grant medium-
and long-term credits must be mainly attributed. Indeed, if the Bank had adopted any
other policy, large amounts of capital would have been tied up for long periods, which
would have made it difficult, if not impossible, to assist the farmers to meet their current
requirements.
The Government has done all in its power to remedy this state of affairs, and out
of its own inadequate resources has devoted a milliard drachmae to the establishment
of the Agricultural Bank. Any further extension of agricultural credit can only be
obtained by means of foreign credits.
In order to improve the position of the farmers during the period of depression,
the Government has concluded an agreement with the Agricultural Bank and guaranteed
credits to be accorded by the Bank to farmers who had suffered loss from the floods, so as
to enable them to resow their fields, even in cases where these credits exceeded the
maximum originally allotted to each of them. It also guaranteed the sale on credit of
seed-grain purchased in Italy and Cyprus to the farmers of the various districts in which
crops had been entirely destroyed by blight.
The capital earmarked for these purposes exceeds 150 million drachmae.
The Agricultural Bank also supplied capital to the Committee for the stocking of
home-grown wheat. The latter was set up to protect the national growers, and purchases,
at prices favourable to the producers, the surpluses of wheat placed by them on the market,
the difference between the relatively high price of home-grown wheat and the price
obtaining on the international market being borne by the consumer. The capital devoted
by the Agricultural Bank to financing the transactions of this institution amounted to
no million drachmae, the latter being thus enabled to pay for the wheat offered by the
home producer 1.32 drachma per kilogramme more than the world price.
. The Bank also granted the farmers advances on barley, to enable them to maintain
their prices at 1.55 to 1.70 drachma per kilogramme at a time when the current price
of barley had fallen to 1.35 to 1.40 drachma per kilogramme.
If further purchased and marketed certain products such as carob-beans, the price
of which had fallen very low, owing to the reduced demand on the foreign markets, which
formerly absorbed these products. Speculation and the fact that the producers were
in need of liquid money and were thus anxious to sell their crops as quickly as possible
were also partly responsible for this slump.
. The Bank undertook the marketing at home of various other products, by dealing
direct with the consumers and setting up shops, so as to eliminate middlemen’s profits
m the interests both of producers and consumers.
Finally, it intervened between the Producer’s Union and the Army Supply Department
and obtained an undertaking from the latter that it would purchase from the former,
at prices relatively favourable to the producers, any oats, bran and barley needed for
ceding army horses. This avoids the necessity of importing these articles from abroad,
as was done previously.
All these transactions have been carried out by the Agricultural Bank following upon
an agreement concluded with the State, whereby the latter guaranteed the Bank against
any loss which it might incur. Apart from the setting up of the Agricultural Bank and the