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The economy's high point.
Despite the spectacular growth of the industrial sector, agriculture remains the high point of the Syrian economy.
The implementation of big projects in the valleys of the Orontes and the Euphrates to alleviate the dependence
of national agriculture on atmospheric conditions has certainly contributed to this growth, and so have mechanization
and agrarian reform from 1958 to 1970. Such consolidation of the agricultural sector is particularly important
for a country in full demographic growth, and which seeks to level its trade balance of foodstuffs and lay strong
bases for the development of national industry of processed foodstuffs. Cereals, grown in almost all parts of the
Fertile Crescent, and cotton produced more particularly in the areas of Homs and Aleppo as well as in the Djezirah,
are the two pillars of Syrian agriculture.
There was a possibility of cotton hegemony in the fifties. It is true that cotton, with a yearly crop of approximately
400,0000, yields a big income, higher than wheat, and that it constitutes a very much appreciated produce in foreign
markets. In the plains of Horns, cotton competes with the sugar beet which supplies the refinery of that city.
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