At the outset of the customs union, in 1958, agriculture was heavily protected. Recalling that the average tariff on all imports was intended to be 7.4%, it is striking that the average tariff on foodstuffs alone was 14.2%. The high level was not the result of a common consensus that foodstuffs should be protected as much as industrial goods; rather, it was a necessary outcome of considerable divergence in agricultural problems and policies among the member countries. First of all, the relative importance of agriculture ranged from 23% of GDP in Italy to 8.4% in Belgium, where the average farmer earned three times as much as in Italy. The range of prices for basic foodstuffs varied widely. Wheat, for example, was much cheaper in France than in either Italy or Germany. The size of farms varied, although most were too small to make mechanization profitable. Holdings between 0.5 and 5 hectares (1 hectare = 2.471 acres) accounted for 85% of all farms in Italy, 55% of the farms in Germany, and nearly 35% of the farms in France. For the United States, less than 10% of farms were under 5 hectares. Agricultural productivity varied widely as well, with the Dutch using three times as much fertilizer per acre as the French and five times as much as Italian farmers.