Agricultural Region (Ninth)

The decree of 8 May 1918 established eleven agricultural regions, with Madeira forming the 9th region, based in Funchal, and divided the agricultural regions into sub-regions, Funchal’s being numbered 36. The same decree created in each region an agricultural station, in which all regional services were to be concentrated, and provided that each agricultural sub-region should have one or more agrarian posts.

The decree of 2 May 1919 laid down that the proceeds of the tax on the manufacture of spirit (aguardente, distilled from sugar cane or wine), the tax on molasses, etc., should form revenue of the District General Council (Junta Geral) ‘expressly assigned to the costs of installing and running the agricultural station of the 9th Region’. However, the purposes of this station and the services entrusted to it were only clearly set out in decree no. 8089 of 3 April 1922.

Under this decree, the Agricultural Station of the 9th Region is responsible for the physico-chemical and technological services of the district, the crop-growing and biological-agricultural services, and the services of the sugar, alcohol and spirit regime. It is also charged with spreading knowledge about the best use of native plants and the eradication of harmful and poisonous weeds, as well as about the protection of useful animal species and the destruction of harmful ones.

The administration of Madeira’s sugar regime (regímen sacarino, the legal regime governing sugar and alcohol production), except for those fiscal functions relating to sugar and alcohol that belong exclusively to the Ministry of Finance, is the responsibility of the Agricultural Station of the 9th Region. There is a technical commission for the supervision of this regime, made up of the director of the said Station, the engineer of the Industrial District (Circunscrição Industrial) and the head of the District Inspection Department (Repartição Distrital de Fiscalização).

The decree of 3 April 1922 transferred to the Agricultural Station of the 9th Region all the rural and urban properties that had belonged to the defunct Agricultural Board (Junta Agrícola), together with the materials they contained. It further laid down that the revenues previously handed over to the District General Council (Junta Geral) for the Station's expenses should continue to be collected in the customary way, but deposited with the local branch of the Caixa Geral dos Depósitos, at the order of the Director of the Station, so that he could apply them as the law prescribed.

The Station is to have a meteorological and phenological station, experimental and demonstration plots, a chemical laboratory, a facility for the observation of plant diseases, a display collection of soils, fertilisers, etc., and a cold store.

On 7 May 1921 the agricultural engineer Sá Viana arrived in Madeira, charged with organising the 9th Agricultural Region, setting up its services and placing the staff of the defunct Agricultural Board. Only in 1922, however, was the Agricultural Station of the region definitively installed, taking over certain services that had provisionally been in the hands of the General Council.

The decree of 24 December 1901, which divided the agronomic services into three regions, placed the district of Funchal in the southern agronomic region, and the law of 9 July 1913 created 28 agricultural sections, the Funchal section being no. 25. The decree of 17 August 1912 and the decree with force of law of 26 May 1911 also deal with the agricultural organisation of the country.