310 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY [VII, IV
What is overstocking ? A definition which I have given elsewhere [ 5 ] is
that ' Overstocking is the maintenance of animals on a piece of land to the detri-
ment of its carrying capacity '. In the same article, I pointed out that such car-
rying capacity could be reduced without loss of soil or even of soil fertility, and that,
therefore, soil erosion is not an inevitable sequel to overstocking. Never-
theless it is a common sequel, and the one which usually makes the solution of each
overstocking problem an urgent necessity. In every way overstocking is alto-
gether undesirable from the European point of view; an evil which, wherever
found, should be removed if possible. The significance of the qualification ' Euro-
pean point of view' will be apparent later.
Since an avowed aim of every veterinary department is the control of animal
diseases, particularly epizootic diseases liable to cause widespread and heavy
mortality, it would appear that any progress towards the achievement of this aim
must tend to increase stock populations, and may lead to overstocking with con-
sequent overgrazing, or to an aggravation of these evils where they exist already.
This view of disease-control is taken by many, and a common statement in local
reports on soil erosion is to the effect that successful veterinary measures feed
the roots of this evil. For example, in the Report of the Native Economic Com-
mission, Union of South Africa [6], on page 14, we read : ' Measures for combating
animal diseases have largely increased the number of cattle. Normally this
should have increased the capacity of the country for carrying population, but
the Natives' non-economic cattle outlook caused it to have the opposite effect'.
And the Report of the Kenya Land Commission [ 7 ], on page 494, states : ' At
the beginning of this century, in the country now known as Kenya Colony, the
cattle had been suffering for the previous twenty years from a series of disastrous
epidemics ; in numbers they were comparatively few, and the grazing was more
than ample to supply their needs. With the introduction of British Administra-
tion, veterinary measures for the control of these diseases were introduced, and
by 1920 the cattle population had increased to an estimated total of 3,000,000.
Up to that year signs of overstocking and consequent deterioration of land and
cattle were hardly noticeable '.
Statements such as these naturally cause a government to doubt whether
money allocated to its veterinary department is being spent in the country's
best interest, and hesitancy in supporting every activity of their veterinary depart-
ments is apparent at the headquarters of many colonial governments of the
present day. It is necessary, therefore, that each veterinary department exa-
mine its activities in the light of such criticisms, and ask itself if its policy of
disease-control is compatible with a wider policy of rational stocking and soil
preservation. Of such supreme importance to every country is its soil, that it is
difficult to think of any economic desideratum which might justifiably be pur-
chased by the sacrifice of much of this soil. Certainly the desideratum of
disease-control should not be so purchased.