PART III 



AGRICULTURE IN THE TROPICS 

 (GENERAL) 



CHAPTER I 

 VILLAGE OR PEASANT AGRICULTURE 



AGRICULTURE in the tropics may be fairly well divided into 

 capitalist or "planting" enterprises, and "village" or peasant 

 cultivations of rice-field, grain-field, or yam-garden, and fruit- 

 garden, worked upon the very small scale, without hired labour. 



The ideal of some administrators in the tropics has ap- 

 parently been, and of a sprinkling of people in Europe and 

 America who have no acquaintance with actual tropical con- 

 ditions still is, a kind of " old-fashioned socialist " one a dense 

 population of small cultivators, each tilling his own little piece 

 of land, and growing or making practically everything that 

 he requires. The nearest approach to this is probably to be 

 seen in outlying districts of many tropical countries, remote 

 from the influence of Europeans or Chinese. In the most 

 extreme cases there may be practically no capitalist enterprise 

 in the country at all, and the corollary is of course the absence 

 of any appreciable export trade, or in other words, so far as 

 the remainder of mankind are concerned, the country might 

 almost as well be non-existent. This is agriculture reduced to 

 its greatest simplicity, and the agriculturist must not have any 

 but the very simplest wants, as he must himself supply them. 



The following description of village agriculture in Ceylon 

 may therefore serve as general, since the differences are mainly 

 in detail ; in much of India, for instance, other grains take the 



