Page 156 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 156
maize to the people!
Graph 12. Maize yield in Yugoslavia
Source: Tomasevich 1955, 476; Maček 1993, 33-34.
panded slightly in the second half of the 1920s, only to swiftly return to the
steady long-term level. The harvest volume recorded higher growth due to
the proportionately higher yield. In the interwar period, maize yield re-
mained at the same level as before World War II. In the new environment,
where the relationship between prices was determined by the producers
from the Pannonian Plain, the Slovenian yield was lower in comparison
with the state average (Graph 12). However, the state average was high due
to the most productive areas in the Pannonian Plain that had been among
the most productive at the European level already before World War I.
When compared with the other regions directly, Slovenian peasants were
highly productive maize growers. The role of maize for livestock farming
was still considerable, but it was significantly less important for human
consumption.
Ultimately, potatoes!
During the interwar period, the “hundred-year competition” between
maize and buckwheat in Slovenia ended (Graph 13). The surfaces dedicat-
ed to buckwheat had declined drastically already during World War I –
by approximately 40%. After the war, the decrease continued in the first
half of the 1920s, when the presence of buckwheat in the fields was min-
154
Graph 12. Maize yield in Yugoslavia
Source: Tomasevich 1955, 476; Maček 1993, 33-34.
panded slightly in the second half of the 1920s, only to swiftly return to the
steady long-term level. The harvest volume recorded higher growth due to
the proportionately higher yield. In the interwar period, maize yield re-
mained at the same level as before World War II. In the new environment,
where the relationship between prices was determined by the producers
from the Pannonian Plain, the Slovenian yield was lower in comparison
with the state average (Graph 12). However, the state average was high due
to the most productive areas in the Pannonian Plain that had been among
the most productive at the European level already before World War I.
When compared with the other regions directly, Slovenian peasants were
highly productive maize growers. The role of maize for livestock farming
was still considerable, but it was significantly less important for human
consumption.
Ultimately, potatoes!
During the interwar period, the “hundred-year competition” between
maize and buckwheat in Slovenia ended (Graph 13). The surfaces dedicat-
ed to buckwheat had declined drastically already during World War I –
by approximately 40%. After the war, the decrease continued in the first
half of the 1920s, when the presence of buckwheat in the fields was min-
154
