70 CEREALS 



price not only of the single grain, but of those that can 

 be substituted for it; and a somewhat elaborate study of 

 prices which I carried out in my books on " Burma Rice " 

 and on " Indian Wheat and Grain Elevators " leaves no 

 doubt that at seasons other than that of the ''knock- 

 down " harvest sales, the foreign prices for Indian wheat, 

 say, have little to do with the smallness of the trade done. 

 India as a whole, excluding Burma, cannot be said to 

 produce grain for the purpose of exportation, though 

 certain irrigation tracts already do so, and others will 

 no doubt follow. 



There are tracts where irrigation or alluvium renders 

 production so cheap that the mass of the wheat or rice 

 can still be sold to a profit at the knock-down prices that 

 are current at harvest time. But India as a whole parts 

 only with so much of her food as can or must be sacrificed 

 to liquidate certain agrarian charges ; and when she has 

 a superfluity she releases it, because it would go bad on 

 her hands. As the Indian population grows the exporters 

 will have to conform to methods that give the cultivator 

 a better return for his exported produce, or they will 

 find those methods adopted to keep the grain in the 

 country. At present the volume of the exports of food- 

 grains from India at harvest time is mainly determined 

 by the exigencies of the cultivator. He has, as I have 

 said, to sell a quantity of his produce at -harvest time 

 because he requires ready money for his land revenue, 

 his irrigation charges, interest on borrowed money, etc. 

 What he requires at that season is a definite sum of 

 money. When prices are low he has to sell a greater 

 quantity to the exporter to raise that sum. Hence the 

 anomaly that, given a fair crop, we sometimes though 

 rarely find early exports to be largest in quantity in 

 those seasons in which prices are low. This is a point 

 I shall have occasion to revert to. I allude to it here 

 merely as a step in the exposition of the fact that no 

 useful estimate of so-called " exportable surplus " can 

 be made in respect of a single grain. 



The question arises whether it is possible to make an 

 estimate of exportable surplus with reference to food- 

 grains as a whole. If this is to be done we must find' 



