Flax growing advice from Eng. Flávio Martins

"The aim of this booklet is to give our nation's farmers the scientific knowledge they need to conscientiously cultivate flax.
It is a book for farmers, although it seems that using too much technical and scientific language makes it boring to read and understand. We therefore prefer it to any other process, which, by seeking too much beauty of form and simplicity of ideas, often ends up misrepresenting or mystifying reality."

Martins, Flávio. 1944. O Linho para Fibra - Sua Cultura. Senhora da Hora: Edição da Empresa Fabril do Norte.

There are books that are more extense on the flax subject, but I consider these written in the 1940’s by Eng. Flávio Martins something special because they had a clear mission: to ensure that the farmers that were growing flax for EFANOR* had all the necessary information to produce good quality crops. For this to happen, the information had to be precise, without any condescendent simplifications. After all, there was an industry depending on these small farmers, and creating information like this was key to make sure the flax arriving at EFANOR’s industrial units was good enough.
These two little books, even if covering only the stages comprising the growing of the flax plant, are very detailed and were the only ones where I found precise instructions for this part of the process. It covers the preparation of the field, sowing season, amount of seed to be used, crop maintenance and at last, the harvest to deliver the material to EFANOR’s industrial units. More important than just instructing, Eng.Flávio Martins also explains the technical reasons behind his advices, demystifying the processes.
Even if the original purpose was the flax growing for industrial processing, the information is still very relevant nowadays for someone who is looking to grow flax in a smaller scale.

These books came to be because the Empresa Fabril do Norte (EFANOR), in the 1940’s, tried to integrate flax production with its industrial processing. Since the company didn’t grow its own fiber, it established contracts with farmers that supplied them, and the company would then handle the retting and fiber processing from then on. 

As a final note, EFANOR was the last industrial unit in Portugal to process locally grown flax, up until 1979.
By the end of the seventies, the government subsidized the flax crops with 10.000$/ha, but the EEC subsidized the same culture for their member countries with 17.000$/ha (Portugal wasn't a member yet). With lower subsidies and higher production costs (in our country, the land areas are small and the agricultural processes were not mechanized), it wasn’t possible to compete: in 1979 the last 14ha were grown and the remaining retting unit was shut down.
EFANOR kept spinning linen in their factory for a while longer, but using imported raw matter

-

*EFANOR, Empresa Fabril do Norte, was a large textile spinning mill based in the north of Portugal founded in the beginning of the 20th century;