70 SOCIAL SCIENTIST figure for 1830 is certainly an overestimate since some areas like Kabylia were not under direct Turkish administration. Nevertheless, the surface used for wheat growing in 1830 was certainly not more than one-fourth or one-fifth of the surface cultivated at present. Consequently, only the most suitable lands would be used for wheat growing and even these could be left fallow frequently. Between 1851 and 1900, when both the cultivated surface and the intensity of land use increased sharply (though a fallow period every second year was respected by both French and Algerian cultivators) the yield of soft wheat declined gradually from an average of 7 4 quintals per hectare to 6 2 quintals^. Improved methods of cultivation resulted in a modest increase in productivity in the modern French-owned sector of agriculture (9.5 quintals per hectare in 1956-61), but productivity remained low in comparison with European agriculture (14.2 quintals per hectare in France in 1935). Tidafi6 has calculated that even in 1952, at the height of the colonial period and in the relatively prosperous agricultural area around Oran, the production cost of Algerian wheat remained higher than world market prices, so that colonial agriculture could subsist only with government support. Even in the colonial period wine, fruits and vegetables were the only agricultural products which Algeria could profitably produce at world market prices. But too much wine was being produced even in France and in other southern European countries (Italy., Spain, Portugal) and the sale of Algerian wine was guaranteed only as long as it had free access to the French market. After Algerian independence France guaranteed the purchase of considerable quantities of Algerian wine, but the French government soon came under pressure from French agricultural interests to cut down on imports. While wine imports were never entirely stopped, the French government tended to use the threat of cutting down on them as a means of putting political pressure on Algeria to safeguard French industrial and oil interests in Algeria. When French wine imports from Algeria were temporarily stopped after the Algerian nationalization of French interests in 1971 the Soviet Union accepted to buy some Algerian wine, but at less than the prevailing world market prices. The international market for fruits and vegetables offered better prospects and their production was stimulated both by the French authorities in the period 1945-1962 and by the Algerian authorities after independence. But these cultures are only feasible in a narrow coastal strip and some adjacent mountain valleys (about 1,500,000 hectares alto-gether),whcrc there is enough rainfall, and not on the semiarid high plateaux that make up the largest part of rural Algeria. Even when expensive large-scale irrigation projects are implemented in these regions, as has been planned, irrigation water will be used to increase wheat production rather than to grow orchards. Sheep breeding is an economic activity well suited 10 the semiarid climate of most of Algeria, aftd it played a major role in Algerian