CATTLE SURVEY OP THE AMBITSAR DISTRICT 29 



Wheat being the desirable crop the minimum amount of purely 

 fodder crops is put down so that there is no appreciable margin in a 

 bad year. There is a custom also of keeping useless cattle, that cannot 

 be provided for comfortably, to the detriment of the working bullocks. 

 It is true that their manure is an asset but the people do not usually 

 make the best use of it. The Sikhs do not care to sell their cattle to 

 strangers for fear they should get into the hands of Mahommedans or 

 skin-dealers and appear to prefer to see them die of starvation when 

 fodder is scarce. 



65. The fodder question will receive more attention no doubt 



when farm animals become so valuable that it will 



The fodder question. ., . , .. 



pay the agriculturist to cater tor their wants just 



as much as it pays him to grow wheat. But the people are very con- 

 servative and economic lessons have to be learned in the hard school 

 of bitter experience. There are probably very few civilised countries in 

 which well defined agreements between landlord and tenant are not 

 always required, laying down the uses to which the land is to be put 

 and the rotation of crops to be adopted. Every far seeing landlord must 

 see that it is to his interest and that of his tenants in the future that a 

 proper rotation is adopted and that the farm animals are provided for. 



. It might be feasible to so arrange the scale of charges for water 

 rates that there would be more incentive to grow fodder crops than 

 there is at present and this matter might be referred to the Canal 

 Department for opinion. 



Finally it may be said that a fodder famine in the Amritsar District 

 would be practically unknown if sufficient fodder crops were grown by 

 the people. Since the district has come under flow irrigation damage 

 to forage crops does not depend so much on the failure of the rains, 

 though in such a case the ' chari ' crop suffers, as it does from losses 

 from the floods which so frequently occur in wet seasons. 



66. Before the construction of the Bari Doab Canal, Amritsar, like 



the rest of the Punjab, was periodically visited 

 Famines. ^ v f am i ne , The district suffered from scarcity in 



