Wheat growing is only possible on a commercial scale in the south of Brazil where temperature and climate are not unlike those of the European lands of origin of this cereal. At present Rio Grande is the only great wheat producing state, although Paraná has a budding industry; the great Italian firm of Matarazzo has recently acquired large areas of land in that state with the object of growing wheat and establishing a flour mill. Rio Grande, which owes the major part of its opening-up to the German settlers who emigrated there about the middle of the nineteenth century, already grows half enough wheat to satisfy the internal needs of the State, for although she still imports 361,000 barrels of flour, and 236,000 bushels of wheat (equal to another 47,000 barrels) yet she also grows enough wheat to yield 407,000 barrels of native flour. She has, it is calculated, over 83,000 hectares of land under wheat, employs 29,000 field hands, and has over a thousand grain mills. Many of these are equipped with out-of-date machinery, and are small, but there are others fitted with good modern systems producing fine flour. Two of the best wheat producing municipalities are Alfredo Chaves and Caxias, each of which have over four thousand hectares under wheat and produce an average of six thousand tons of this grain; the first municipality has fifty-one and the second sixty-seven mills. To show the “riograndense” growth in wheat production: 1909 15,250 tons 1910 31,267 „ 1912 52,332 „ 1915 55,000 „ Santa Catharina is a cereal State, but does not today produce notable quantities; São Paulo, the high interior of Rio de Janeiro, and the hills of Minas, are all suitable; fine wheat, barley and oats are often seen in the vicinity of European colonies. But Brazilian production is not yet within measurable distance of coping with internal demands, and as a result wheat, with wheat-flour, accounts for one-fifth of Brazil’s total import values. The bulk of the grain imported comes from the River Plate. Linked with the agricultural production of cereals is the flour-milling industry, which dates from the time when wheat entered Brazil free of duty while wheat-flour paid thirty reis a kilo: this was the condition of the tariff until December, 1899, by which time two large mills had been established in Rio de Janeiro. In January of the following year imported wheat was taxed for the first time, ten reis a kilo, while the duty on flour was reduced to twenty-five reis; national milling profits suffered correspondingly.