COLOMBO. 
Added as a Supplement Monthly to the " TBOPICAL AGRICULTUBIST 
The following 
September : — 
pages include the Contents of the Agricultural Magazine for 
Vol. XIII.] 
SEPTEMBER, 1901. 
[No. 
AGKICULTUEAL BANKS. 
P there is any place where the estab- 
lishment of State Agricultural 
Banks would prove to be of un- 
doubted value it is Ceylon, where 
the condition of the small land- 
holder is deteriorating day by 
day. There are several causes which have been 
and which are at work in reduciiig the prosperity 
ot the ffoyiya. The limitation of the area of laud 
available for his operations through the better 
defining of Crown titles and the division of land 
among a large number of inheritors, the 
exhaustion of the soil in patches of land which 
have been under cultivation for long periods 
■without the addition of fertilizers, and the 
increase of individual expenses of the cultivators 
through the introduction of new articles of food 
and clothing, and through the increase in the prices 
of articles of daily use, have one and all con- 
tributed to the increasing poverty of the cultivator. 
These and other causes have driven him into 
the hands of the money-lender, whose exorbitant 
^ates of interest have in many cases completed 
the ruin of many a prosperous cultivator. Before 
one can advocate the establishment of Agri- 
cultural Banks, there are two questions that will 
have to be satisfactorily answered :— Are the cul- 
tivators of land involved to such an extent as to 
make indebtedness a general rule, and are they 
paying rates of interest which can be classed as un- 
reasonable and ruinous ? Secondly, is this state of 
things causing any serious deterioration of the 
prosperity of the country, and will the establish- 
ment of Agricultural Banks lead to an improve- 
ment in the existing state of things, and bring on 
such results as will justify the trouble and labour 
that will be required in their establishment and 
maintenance ? Both these questions can be satis- 
factorily answered without entering into an 
elaborate system of calculation, which cannot 
be accurate for want of necessary statistics 
and particulars. There is one'simple way of gaug- 
ing the indebtedness of the cultivator. A return of 
accounts lent on mortgage deeds during a year 
can be obtained from the Registrar-General's 
Department. Such a return for a series of years 
will not only shew the amount of indebtedness, 
but will shew the proportions in which this has 
increased year by year. In addition to loans 
raised on mortgages, there is the continual 
secondary loan system by which a cultivator 
borrows from the petty trader in the village all 
the seed paddy he requires for sowing his rice 
fields, all the manure he requires for use in the 
fields, and the little money he takes for his urgent 
necessaries. All these are received against the crops, 
and after harvesting the lender is repaid with 
such rates of interest as are now commonly 
agreed on. Both these systems of raising loans 
are, it may be said, becoming universal in every 
village, but as regards the last-mentioned method 
there is no way of obtaining a return or of 
expressing in figures the extent to which it is 
resorted to. The best means for obtaining 
anything like an idea of the extent of these 
temporary loans will be to select three or four 
villages in different districts at random 
and obtain returns of the temporary lo 
