Agricultural Services
Original title: Serviços Agrícolas
Describes the 1922 reorganisation of Madeira's agricultural services under the agricultural station of the 9th Region, its staff and experimental stations.
Madeira’s agricultural services were reorganised by Decree no. 8089 of 30 April 1922, which divided them, within the agricultural station of the 9th Region, into three groups: the group of physico-chemical and technological services; the group of cultivation and biological-agricultural services; and the group of services for the regime governing sugar, alcohol and spirit (aguardente, distilled from sugar cane or wine). The head of the agricultural station, who also directs one of the service groups, is an agronomist engineer, and the directors of the other two service groups are likewise agronomist engineers.
In addition to the three agronomist engineers, the station is to have two agricultural supervisors, an analyst and a laboratory assistant, so it will not be for want of technical staff that Madeiran agriculture fails to prosper. The agricultural station has autonomous administration under the decrees with force of law of 16 May 1911 and 14 December 1912.
The decree of 3 April 1922 retained, and placed under the agricultural station of the 9th Region, the following four experimental stations created by the former Agricultural Board (Junta Agrícola): the stations of Louros (‘laurels’) and Ribeira Brava (‘wild river’), in the low zone of the island; the Santo da Serra (‘the saint of the uplands’) station, in the middle zone; and the Paul da Serra (‘upland marsh’) station, in the high zone.
The agricultural station of the 9th Region is subordinate to the Directorate-General of Agricultural Services (Serviços Agrícolas). See Agricultural Region and Agricultural Syndicate of Madeira.
In this article
Time
Years mentioned · 03-
A decree granted the agricultural station administrative autonomy.
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A further decree was issued on the autonomous administration of the agricultural station.
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Decree no. 8089 defined the duties of the 9th Region Agricultural Station, transferring to it the extinct Junta Agrícola's property, experimental stations, forest policing and the sugar regime.
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Decree no. 8089 reorganised Madeira's agricultural services into three groups.
Place
Places mentioned · 04
- Louros
Funchal. Site of a lowland experimental station.
An inhabited locality in São Gonçalo, Funchal, site of a 1656 chapel of Nossa Senhora da Incarnação. It hosts the Viveiro dos Louros, the Junta's lowland experimental station and plant nursery. It lies on the Lazareto road, where land was requested in 1922 for a modern hospital.
- Paul da Serra
Ponta do Sol. Site of the upland experimental station.
The Paul da Serra is the only extensive plateau on Madeira, lying at about 1,500 m across four municipalities, where temperatures can fall to freezing. The Rabaçal and Risco springs, the Ribeira da Tabua and the Ribeira da Janela rise at its edges, and it feeds the main levadas. The Elucidário records its vegetation, agricultural trials, shelter houses, sheep-shearing gatherings, common-land use and an unfinished road project.
- Ribeira Brava
Site of a lowland experimental station.
Ribeira Brava is one of Madeira's oldest parishes, named after its violent stream, with a town, port and quay. The Elucidário covers its collegiate church and its paintings, its Franciscan convent and chapels, and its São Pedro festival with a boat and sword dance. It also records riots against the metric system and deaths when troops fired on the people during the 1884 election.
- Santo da Serra
Machico. Site of the mid-altitude experimental station.
Santo da Serra is an upland parish of Madeira, in the municipality of Machico and partly within Santa Cruz; some of its localities passed to Santa Cruz in 1852. The Elucidário records its crater lagoon (the Lagoa), Burnay's dairy of 1895, a mid-altitude agricultural experimental station and a meteorological post, and notes that it was a centre of Protestant converts. It was also a resort linked to Poiso by a motor road.