Excerpt from The Agricultural Economy of Israel Israel is primarily an industrial, rather than an agricultural, nation. Farming enterprises, with forestry and fisheries, now contribute only about 12 percent of the national income. But impressive strides in agricultural development have been made since the foundation of the state in 19148, in spite of two inhibiting factors: (i) The lack of favorable natural resources; and (2) the strong influence of unrestricted immigration on the national economy. On the first count, less than a third of this small, low-lying country can be used for agriculture. The greater part is too rugged or too dry. On the second, the nearly a million Jews who freely immigrated into Israel be tween 19h9 and 1959 were mostly without private means; nearly all of them looked to the new state to provide homes and a livelihood. Few of them had been farmers in the lands they left; many were unaccustomed to, or unsuited for, physical labor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.