THE INDIAN CEREAL TRADE. 



By FREDERICK NOEL-PATON. 

 Director-General of Commercial Intelligence, India. 



I HAVE been asked to read a paper on the Indian Cereal 

 Trade, and the point to which I wish to give the greatest 

 prominence from the outset is that India only exports 

 about 6 per cent, of her cereals. The rest is wanted for 

 home consumption, and it is not possible to discuss even 

 the export trade without regard to that fact. For an 

 expansion of consumption by I per cent, (or a corre- 

 sponding contraction in yield) would presumably reduce 

 the theoretically exportable surplus by 16 per cent., while 

 the said surplus would disappear altogether if the internal 

 consumption grew by 6J per cent. 



The subject given me has many branches and aspects, 

 on any one of which one might write a volume. I can, 

 therefore, only run over them superficially. The popula- 

 tion of India is distinguished from that of any European 

 country, not only by its magnitude, but by its diversity 

 in respect of races, and of the customs and diets peculiar 

 to the several tracts. Throughout the greater part of 

 the United Kingdom one rarely finds any food-grain but 

 wheat, oats, and barley in common use, and these are 

 grown at one season, so it is easy to establish the 

 total area covered by them. But in India there are 

 many food-gTains rice, wheat, maize, jowar (Sorghum 

 vu-lgare), bajra (Pennisetum typhoideum), ragi (Eleusine 

 coracana), and a variety of other secondary millets and 

 grains which there is no time to describe. These cereals, 

 moreover, are grown, one as a rain crop and another 

 as a cold weather crop, while some are grown in both 

 seasons. And the seasons themselves are not by any 

 means in unison throughout India. 



