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SYSTEMS OF PERMANENT AGRICULTURE 



"As to the nature of the crops grown in the country: wheat, corn, various 

 kinds of peas and lentils, cotton, and sugar cane are grown exclusively in north- 

 ern India, except such portions where the lands are low and the rainfall heavy 

 where rice is grown. Rice is the principal crop in southern India." 



"Considering the amount of hard drudging work that the Indian farmer puts 

 into his work, the yield l from the labor is pitifully disappointing." 



"At harvest time extra hands are needed and they are employed by the far- 

 mer, who agrees to pay them a certain amount of grain to compensate them for 

 their labor. If payment is made in coin, it seldom exceeds two and a half annas 

 (five cents 2 ) a day. The income of the average East Indian, according to gov- 

 ernmental statistics, is only fifty cents a month, and farmers, as a community, 

 live in the most miserable poverty. 



"There are 450,000 square miles of waste land in Hindustan, or nearly one 

 fourth of the country, that is to-day uncultivated, though capable of yielding 

 rich harvests. The people of India do not know enough to bring these lands 

 under cultivation. The soil that is in use is never allowed to lie fallow, even 

 for a brief space of time. Crops follow one another in quick rotation. The 

 farmer lacks the knowledge and resources to enrich his land by means of fer- 

 tilizers. The only fertilizer that he knows about is cow dung and, unfor- 



1 Nitya Gopal Mukerji, Professor of Agriculture and Agricultural Chemistry in 

 the Civil Engineering College at Sibpur, Bengal, India, in his "Handbook of Indian 

 Agriculture" (1907), reports "the area under food grains in India at 164 million 

 acres and the produce of grain per acre per annum at 840 lb., and the population 

 at 350 millions." 



There are about 70 million acres of rice and nearly 30 million acres of wheat. 

 The average yields are estimated at 17 bushels of rice (of 60 lb. each), about 10 

 bushels of wheat, and 7 to 12 bushels of corn, per acre, and in the main the crops 

 are grown under irrigation. 



The following quotations from Mukerji are of interest: 



"The farmer aims at doing without manures (the English term for commercial 

 fertilizers) as much as possible, at keeping up the fertility of his land simply by 

 feeding his cattle with nourishing oil cakes and utilizing all the cattle dung, urine, 

 and litter in manuring his fields. By growing leguminous crops and by adopting 

 a judicious system of rotation he also tries to avoid the purchase of manures (fer- 

 tilizers)." 



" The reported fertility of Indian_ soils is more a myth than a reality. Where 

 the soil has been in cultivation for many years, the virgin richness has disappeared, 

 except where it is irrigated by canals (e.g., the Eden Canal) bringing rich desposits of 

 silt, or annually flooded by rivers leaving such deposits (e.g., in eastern Bengal). 

 As a rule, Indian soils yield poor crops. 



"In the famine of 1770, in nine months, ten million people died in Bengal. 

 The famine of 1784 was of such a bad type that four seers (8 lb.) of wheat were sold 

 for a rupe (48 ct.), and the deaths from starvation were innumerable. The most 

 recent of all famines, viz., that prevailing in some part of India or other from 1897 

 to 1900, has been severer than the famine of 1874-1878." 



* The anna is about 3 cents, but it sometimes depreciates to less than 2 cents. 

 C. G. H. 



