The chief products are coffee, sesame, the sugar-cane, cocoa, vanilla and tobacco.
Among other important productions of the Ottoman Empire are sesame, coleseed, castor oil, flax, hemp, aniseed, mohair, saffron, olive oil, gums, scammony and liquorice.
Local products, including kat, firewood, live animals, ghi, dates, honey, wax, gums and sesame oil, to the value of about £125,000, were exported in 1919-20.1,065 steam vessels of aggregate tonnage 2,736,391 and sailing craft of tonnage 365,569 cleared in the year ending March 1919.
The summer crops (millet, sesame, figs, melons, grapes, olives, &c.) are fertilized by the heavy " dews " which are one of the most remarkable climatic features of the country and to a large extent atone for the total lack of rain for one half the year.
Many species are rich in gums and resins; the calambac, mastic, copal, cedar, &c. Many others are oleaginous, among them, peanuts, sun-flowers, the bene seed (sesame), corozo, almond and palmachristi.