AGRARIAN REVOLUTION IN ALGERIA 71 economic life before 1830, It was systematically neglected by the European colonists, but remained an important resource for the Algerian rural population. In 1957 animal production (mainly sheep breeding) accounted for 20.4 percent of the gross agricultural product. The European agricultural sector, which accounted for about 60 percent of the total agricultural sector, accounted for only 17.4 percent of the animal products, while animal products made up 42.3 percent of the gross income of the Algerian agricultural population.6 The development of sheep breeding in northern Algeria is, however, thwarted by its labour extensive nature in relation to the high rural population density and the high level of rural unemployment. Since about 1850 most marginal lands, formerly used as pasture, have been brought under cultivation. The large-scale reconversion of agricultural lands, however unproductive, to pasture is inconceivable considering the already very high level of rural unemployment. Moreover, overcultivation has led to serious erosion in many areas, and what is needed is terracing of agricultural land on slopes and reforestation of the higher slopes, both of which are incompatible with large-scale grazing. The steppe area on the northern fringes of the Sahara is suitable for little else than pastoralism. However, the steppe cannot provide sufficient pastures for large numbers of sheep all the year round. Traditionally the nomadic tribes in this area had their summer pastures on the somewhat less arid high plateaux to (he n The economic unattractivencss of Algerian agriculture was already implicitly recognized by French bankers in the nineteenth century. The Bank of Algeria, founded in 1851, had never been in-tested in providing agricultural credit, except for a brief period from 1877 to 1885 when vineyards were developed on a large scale in Algeria in response to the destruction of the French vineyards by phylloxera.7 The development of French agriculture in Algeria was mainly financed by direct government aid and by a system of mutual credit associations, while French private investors mainly occupied themselves with the trade between Algeria and France (channelled through Marseilles), and with the profitable financing of the development of a modern infrastructure in Algeria. French agricultural colonization in Algeria mainly