THE 



TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF THE 



CEYLON AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Von. XXXII. COLOMBO, JANUAEY 15th, 1909. No. 1. 



Capital in Agriculture. 



As we have shown in detail in a book 

 upon Agriculture in the Tropics, shortly 

 to appear, progress in agriculture proper 

 depends first upon progress or proper 

 equipment in what we may call the 

 preliminaries to Agriculture. These are, 

 roughly : (1) land, (2) climate, (3) popula- 

 tion and labour, (4) transport, (5) capita* 

 or money, (6) drainage and irrigation, 

 (7) tillage, (8) education, and (9) crops. 

 Now land, climate, population, trans- 

 port (to a very large extent), irrigation, 

 tillage (to some extent), education (to 

 some extent), and crops are satisfactorily 

 enough arranged in Ceylon. There 

 remains capital. As a late President of 

 the United States remarked, finance and 

 transport are the keys of progress. So 

 convinced were we that this was th e 

 only sound order in which to deal with 

 agricultural problems, that the very first 

 paper read at the first Meeting of the 

 Board of .Agriculture was by ourselves 

 on Co-operative Credit Societies, and we 

 have preached this doctrine to some- 

 what unwilling ears ever since, and 

 have had something about it in practi- 

 cally every number of the " T.A." 



The tide i9 beginning to turn, and the 

 Society is displaying an increasing 

 interest in this question. It must be 

 clearly recognised that no serious pro- 

 gress is possible without money, but 

 once the expenditure of money is started 

 on the right lines, it breeds more 

 money. At present the villager is 

 helpless in the grasp of the local money 

 lender, and cannot afford to borrow a 

 penny even if he thinks it probable that 

 it might bring in twopence or three- 

 pence . Manuring of rice, transplantation 

 of rice, cultivation of vegetables, manur- 

 ing of coconuts, sale of produce outside 

 the village, and all other suggested im- 

 provements demand money for a start. 



Mr. McCall gave some interesting facts 

 about Egypt at the last Meeting of the 

 Board. There are no white planters 

 there, and at first the natives were 

 averse to manuring ; but, once convinced 

 by ocular demonstration that it paid, 

 and provided with the necessary money 

 by Agricultural Banks or Soci ties, 

 they took it up so strongly that within 

 four years Egypt was consuming 

 £175,000 worth of artificial manure a 



