TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF THE 



CEYLON AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Vol. XXVI. COLOMBO, JUNE 15th, 1906. No. 5. 



Some Possibilities of Improvement in Village Agriculture. II. 



By the intermingling of village and estate agriculture, then, whereby 

 the villagers will have large practical object lessons at their door, and by the 

 institution of school gardens, the introduction of "new products" will be 

 sufficiently furthered, provided that the provision of cheap capital has been attended 

 to. Without this the only result will be to add a few more plants to the wilderness 

 of the average compound. 



The next point for improvement is the varieties of the particidar crops 

 grown. Most of the native fruits, for example, are capable of improvement, and the 

 same is true of the vegetables, and even of crops like rice or coconuts. The question 

 is how to introduce the better kinds when we have got them, and when we have 

 also— and this is very important— assured ourselves that they still remain better 

 when grown in the villagers' compounds or fields by their local methods. 



The majority of improved strains of field crops have been obtained by 

 continual selection of seed from the best parents, and they can only be kept up to 

 their high standard by continual repetition of this process in every generation. 

 Treated as they are sure to be treated in village agriculture, they will rapidly 

 deteriorate, and in two or three generations at most be as poor as any village crop, 

 or as the original strain from which they started. Non-recognition of this fact is at 

 the bottom of a great number of failures of well-meant endeavours to improve the 

 village crops in eastern countries. "Good seed" is introduced at considerable 

 expense from Europe, but in a short time all trace of it has gone for want of 

 selection. If even educated Europeans with special taste for gardening cannot be 

 induced to select seed from the best parents, we cannot expect that the villager will 

 do so. If improvement of the quality of local strains is to be made by selection, 

 then some such method as that which we are informed has been adopted by Lord 

 Cromer's administration in Egypt must be used. This system is applied to cotton, 

 with a view to keeping up the high standard of the Egyptian crop and improving 

 it from year to year. Inspectors go round the fields in crop time and mark the best 

 fields and bushes until they have marked enough to supply all the seed for the 

 next season. The seed of these is separately collected, bought at special rates by 

 Government, and then exchanged against the seed retained by the "fellaheen" 

 for the next sowing, or advanced against the crop. In this way the best available 

 seed is sown every year. Some such method as this might well be adopted in 

 dealing with such crops as rice or in extensions of coconut planting by natives. 

 Their own seed could be exchanged against seed of picked qualities. 



