21 



Grazing grounds in the hills are everywhere reported to be 

 insufficient. During the cold weather the Gaddis and Gujars of 

 the Chamba State bring their cattle down to the Pathankot tahsil 

 to graze. In Murree the cattle often have to subsist on leaves. 



District officers were asked to report whether with the ruling 

 high prices there was any probabilty of grazing grounds being 

 so extended as to admit of an improvement in the number and 

 quality of the animals bred by agriculturists in their own vil- 

 lages. Leaving aside the breeding or exporting tracts the ques- 

 tion for the highly cultivated or importing tracts resolves itself 

 into a conflict between the respective profits of cultivation and 

 grazing, the economic aspect of which has been discussed at 

 length by Mr. Moreland in his note on the cattle supply of the 

 United Provinces. His conclusions apply equally to the Punjab, 

 and are borne out by the reports of District officers in the import- 

 ing tracts. The Settlement Officer of Gurdaspur remarks, " so 

 long as the prices of agricultural produce continue high, the 

 zamindars, whilst keeping a large stock of milch cattle will reduce 

 their male and young stock so as to leave as much land as pos- 

 sible available for the raising of the more valuable non-fodder 

 crops. Under these circumstances home-breeding is not likely to 

 extend, nor are special efforts to this end likely to meet with any 

 measure of success, as there is DO scope for the extension of grazing 

 areas without throwing out of cultivation valuable agricultural 

 land." Any improvement in home-breeding by small land-holders 

 involves, as Mr. Moreland points out, the provision of enclosed, 

 meadows or crofts, and at present the high profits of cultivation 

 forbid any hope that either the individual agriculturist or the 

 village community will deliberately turn down cultivated land 

 to grazing in order to breed more bullocks. The small cultivator 

 cannot afford to forego the immediate profit from increased culti- 

 vation in the doubtful hope of breeding his bullocks cheaper than 

 he can buy them. In any case he is hampered by the conditions 

 of land tenure in the Punjab where holdings are made up of small 

 fields often at long distances from each other precluding the 

 possibility of reserving any pasture worth the name. The difficulty 

 which is experienced in preventing encroachments on the common 

 grazing land of the village even when protected by a clause in the 

 administration paper drawn up at settlement is a commonplace 

 of district administration. 



While, therefore, the District officers of highly developed 

 districts agree that at present there is little prospect of the self- 

 cultivating proprietor substituting grazing for cultivation or of 



any marked improvement in the number of cattle bred in those 







