Réau () is a commune in the

Seine-et-Marne Seine-et-Marne () is a department in the Île-de-France region in Northern France. Named after the rivers Seine and Marne, it is the region's largest department with an area of 5,915 square kilometres (2,284 square miles); it roughly covers its ...

department in the

Île-de-France The Île-de-France (, ; literally "Isle of France") is the most populous of the eighteen regions of France. Centred on the capital Paris, it is located in the north-central part of the country and often called the ''Région parisienne'' (; en, Pa ...

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and t ...

in north-central

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

Ferme de Galande

Around 1881,

sugar beet A sugar beet is a plant whose root contains a high concentration of sucrose and which is grown commercially for sugar production. In plant breeding, it is known as the Altissima cultivar group of the common beet ('' Beta vulgaris''). Together ...

producer Arthur Brandin invested in a

Decauville Decauville () was a manufacturing company which was founded by Paul Decauville (1846–1922), a French pioneer in industrial railways. Decauville's major innovation was the use of ready-made sections of light, narrow gauge track fastened to ...

railway with eight horse-drawn tipping lorries for the Ferme de Galande near Réau, 15 km east of the Decauville factory in Petit Bourg. As well as being a sugar beet farmer, he was also mayor of Réau and Republican Consul of the Canton of Brie-Comte-Robert from 1895 to 1912. The surface soil of his sugar beet fields consisted of clay in which fragments of siliceous sandstone were embedded, used for millstones and structural purposes. The subsoil was limestone, so the fields were often very muddy at harvest time until Brandin installed an innovatively designed drainage system.G. Wery and E. Risler
page ''Irrigations et drainages: l'eau dans les améliorations agricoles,''
p. 106 and 409.

Demographics

The inhabitants are called ''Réaltais''.

Ferme de Galande

Demographics

See also