512 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



and the average import 1,000,000 tons. During the same years, how- 

 ever, imports of wheat increased from 97,000 to 2,000,000 tons, barley 

 from 20,000 to 738,000 tons, and com from 196,000 to 267,000 tons. 

 And at the same time the population increased from 70 to 90 millions. 



CHINA 



The basic features of rural life in pre-revolutionary China could be summarized 

 in two words: poverty and hopelessness. In a typical village a few landlords 

 owned almost all the arable land, and the great majority of the farmers rented 

 tiny plots. Rents were exorbitant, up to 40 percent of the value of a year's 

 harvest, and they were due regardless of losses by natural calamity. The pov- 

 erty of the farmer precluded good seeds, efficient tools, adequate fertilizing, and 

 effective cultivation. Productivity was low and falling, starvation was more 

 than likely in years of drought or flood, and indebtedness was an intolerable 

 burden carried by the great mass of the people from generation to generation.' 



These immemorial peasants, farmers for at least 40 centuries, wanted 

 above all to break the power of the rackrent landlords, and they seem 

 to be willing to accept collective farming in order to do so. Red 

 China's present leaders are aware that the procuring of a constant 

 supply of wholesome food is the basic condition requisite for the build- 

 ing of a powerful nation ; only a rejuvenated agricultural system, they 

 feel, can supply the vast quantities of raw materials, the large accumu- 

 lations of capital, and the protective foods for the workers that are 

 necessary to build the new society. 



There has been a spectacular increase in food grain production. 



Rice production rose from an estimated 48.6 million metric tons in 1049 to 



86.7 million in 1057 and probably 100 million in 1958. Wheat increased from 



13.8 million tons to 24 million in 1957, and probably 30 million in 1958. Pro- 

 ductivity in yield per unit of land has been equally spectacular. Yields in 

 poimds per acre in 1949 and estimates for 1958 are: rice, 1,688 and 3,000; wheat, 

 573 and 1,000.* 



At present, food production is increasing at the annual rate of 

 2.2 percent. China has been able to change from an importing 

 (687,000 tons of rice on the average from 1934-38) to an exporting 

 nation (263,000 tons from 1953-57). China exported 268,000 tons 

 to the Soviet Union in 1957, and is now attempting to enter her rice 

 in the markets of Japan, Pakistan, India, and Ceylon — even into 

 Burma ! Thus it may be said that — 



the political revolution paved the way for the transformation of the rural 

 economy, and the sociocultural reforms reinforce the economic develop- 

 ment. * * * the non-economic factors play just as important a part in the 

 mobilization of agricultural resources as the economic-technical ones.* 



INDIA 



In India, second producer of rice in tlie world after China, rice 

 production has increased by more than 25 percent since pre-World 



* China's agriculture, Focus, Amer. Geogr. Soc, New York, vol. 10, No. 8, April 1960. 

 » Idem. 



* Idem. 



