CEREALS 67 



all its mountains, forests, and waste spaces. Its whole 

 ^superficies is about 190,000 square miles, and this would 

 contain 1,624 Counties of London. Parenthetically, the 

 United Kingdom has an area of about 121,142 square 

 miles. 



Now the area of recorded cultivation alone in India 

 amounts to 444,000 square miles, and this is more than 

 two and one-third times the area of all Spain as you 

 see it on the map. The food-grains, with which we are 

 primarily concerned at the moment, occupy an area of 

 351,000 square miles, which is about one and four-fifths 

 as big as Spain. India exports the produce of only 

 about one-tenth of her cultivated acreage, and of her 

 food-grains she exports only a'bout 6 per cent. Yet 

 what we may call her export acreage alone is consider- 

 ably larger than one quarter of Spain, and it would 

 require an acreage equal to about one-ninth of Spain to 

 produce (independent of fallows) the food-grains alone 

 which India sends abroad. 



I shall probably be asked on what grounds I state that 

 India exports about one-tenth of her agricultural produce. 

 The difficulty of making such an estimate will certainly 

 not escape the notice of so redoubtable an audience. It 

 would not be permissible to lump hundredweights of 

 jute or of cotton or of cotton seed with hundredweights 

 of rice or wheat, for the unit of quantity in each of these 

 commodities has a different value, and represents the 

 produce of different quantities of land. Nor for the 

 purpose now in view can we reduce them all to a 

 common term of value, firstly, because many of them 

 are virtually not exported, and export values are not in 

 any case applicable to produce used in the country; 

 secondly, because export values are often rather vaguely 

 ascertained where there are no export duties ; and thirdly, 

 because there are no up-country statistics about some of 

 the minor articles. The only common term to which 

 we can reduce all descriptions of agricultural produce, 

 exported and unexported, is that of the area of ground 

 required to produce a stated measure. We have such 

 data about yield per acre as enable us to do this with 

 some approach to accuracy. So, when I say that India 



