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Uses. The crop is either cut green for sale 
as a vegetable or permitted to mature. 
It is usually crushed into meal and eaten as a por- 
ridge, sometimes ground into flour to make bread, 
sometimes boiled whole, like rice, or eaten raw as 
a light midday meal. The stems and leaves make 
an excellent fodder. The crop is of considerable 
economic importance as a garden crop and is likely 
to become a much more extensive cultivation in the 
future. 
Ragi. The third cereal for Malaya is ragi, 
(Eleusine but after rice and maize none of the 
Coracana). cereals are worth much consideration, 
except as emergency crops under 
special circumstances. Ragi proved most helpful 
during the rice shortage in 1917 in supplementing 
the restricted supplies of rice. Its great advantage 
is that it can be grown on very poor soils which 
would be quite unsuitable for rice or maize, and 
most estates possess small disused patches of land 
which answer this description. 
It grows best ' on well drained loams and will not 
tolerate inundation. The soil is thoroughly culti- 
vated and pulverised and the seed may be broad- 
casted or, better, transplanted from a nursery. The 
crop occupies the soil for six months and the yields 
depend largely on weather and soil conditions and 
the intensity of cultivation, but an average of 800 
lbs. per acre is easily obtained, if precautions are 
taken to scare away birds. 
When mature, the heads are gathered and the stalks 
are left in the soil to be eaten by cattle, or burned 
or dug out for the next crop. Threshing is done 
by beating piles of the dried heads with sticks and 
