"The culture of coffee is thus combined with that of alimentary crops. Almost all the world over the important industrial crops have to make room in the neighbourhood for food crops. Every agricultural country is forced to produce, at any rate to some extent, its own food, and to live upon itself if it wishes to live at all. In Brazil the dispersion of food crops is extreme, on account of the difficulties of transport; it is hardly less in San Paolo, in spite of the development of the railway system. Each _fazenda_ is a little food-producing centre, the chief crops being maize, manioc and black beans, of which the national dish, the _feijoade_, is made. "It even happens at times that the colonists produce more maize than they consume. They can then sell a few sacks at the nearest market, and add the price to their other resources. In this way crops which are in theory destined solely for their nourishment take on a different aspect from their point of view, yielding them, a revenue which is not always to be despised. "The colonists make their purchases in the nearest town, or, more often, if the _fazenda_ is of any importance, there is a shop or store--what the Brazilians call a _negocio_--in the neighbourhood of the colonists' houses. Its inventory would defy enumeration; it sells at the same time cotton prints and cooking-salt, agricultural implements and petroleum. An examination of the stock will show one just what the little economic unit called a _fazenda_ really is. Although the colonists are to-day almost always free to make their purchases where they please, the trade of shopkeeper on a _fazenda_ is still extremely profitable. He enjoys a virtual monopoly; the _fazendeiro_ sees that no competitor sets up shop in the neighbourhood. The shop is the planter's property; he lets it, and usually at a high rent, which represents not only the value of the premises, but also the commercial privilege which goes with it. It is a sort of indirect commercial tariff levied by the planter on the colonists; a sign of the ever so slightly feudal quality of the organization of property in San Paolo. The custom that used to obtain, of the planter himself keeping shop for the profit, or rather at the expense of his colonists, has generally disappeared.