Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1883-03-24

Bushels. Bushels.
1S77-78. ~ IT'S. S58 188O-S1 =. IA, OLE, 29l
1S28-79.. 2,170,631 1882. -. .37, 1875, 481
lS79-S0... 4,3l2,41S
of which Great Britain and France have
taken the following quantities:
Great Britain, France,
Bushels. Bushels.
1878. .a0,698,5Is 2l7,792
1S78-79. ............... ,597,273 20,656
4oIS-oU. ........... o,U5(,uzz LOO, $50
1ooO-01 1854, l68 2,5l3,933
1882. Il, 507,907 9,908, 403
Assuming that % million bushels are
hold for seed, there will be left a home sup
ply of 175 million bushels; how much of
this is actually consumed, and how much
stored away in reserve, it is impossible TO
ascertain; but it is we'll known that the
quantity held in reserve is very large and
usually estimated, with other bread-stuffs,
sufficient for one whole years consump-
tion, and that it requires from two or three
years accumulated surplus to make up
such reserve.
The total area devoted to wheat each
year is now a little over 90 million acres,
of which million acres are in the Province
Of Punjab, 612 million in the Northwestern
Provinces and Oudh,3 million in the Cen
trail, millionI i'm Bombay,1 miIIion.in Ben
gal, and the remainder divided among the
Provinces of Berar, Sindh, Madras.A imere,
Mysore and British Burmah in the relative
order named. The best average yield is
obtained in the Punjab, where it is esti-
mated at 1873 bushels per acre, and in the
Northwestern Provinces at 1125 bushels;
ha 5a0
acre, though by high cultivation and use
of irrigation and manure, instances are
not uncommon of yield as high as 25 and
even 80 bushels per acre.
CULTIVATION AND COST.
The latitude has but little influence on
the wheat crop in India compared with
differences in soil and mode of cultivation :;
the crop requires a great deal Of moisture,
hence irrigation is of special importance,
and various methods are employed for
that purpose; the one destined to become
a leading factor in the production of
wheat is that of canal irrigation, which is
now receiving the special attention of the
general and local Governments, and i'm
portant works are being made and pro-
jected for an extensive system of canal If
rigation. One of these, the ''Sirhind"
canal in the Punjab, has Just been com
pleted; it was built mainly by prison labor
is SOP miles long, and will irrigate 10000
acres through $500 miles OF minor canals.
The wheat is sown in the autumn and
harvested in March or April; it IS usually
sOwn in drills or rows, and weeded like gar
den STUFF, md in quantities not much larger
than garden patches III the United States
but the agricultural population numbers
ri r. ,-
of innunerabie little units which in agri-
culture, as in everything else in India,
brings the country into Importance, and
this fact is SO closely interviewer with the
whole social. industrial and legal network
of India, that it bears a strong influence
even upon the future question of Indian
UerSUs American wheat.
The Indian agricuIturist "Ryot" can
in no sense be compared to the American
farmer, but rather to the late serf of Rus
STA. He is tenant on hard conditions,
and is by custom and bigotry almost a fix
ture on the particular spot of land where
he was born; his farming is done on
very small scale and according to old
methods, to which he clings with religious
Veneratlon; his wants are very few, and he
endures poverty and even hunger with pa
thence; he cultivates his patch of to 10
acres on shares for the landed proprietor,
"zemindar," who holds under rental to the
Government, and the better half of his
gross income generally goes to the zemin-
dar, the priest (''brahmin'') and thesusurer,
in the form of rent, presents, offerings and
interest, and if he can net 10 cents a day
by his hard and hopeless labor, that will
suffice for the most pressing wants of his
househo d. His home isla mud-or bamboo
hut, his property pair of small bullocks,
few cows calves and goats, a wooden cart
and few brass and earthen pots, in all
worth about fifty dollars, and his imple-
ments and tools are Of the rudest kind,
such as his ancestors used a
thousand years ago; and yet he
IS making some progress under
British rule, and finds his wants increas-
ing, and at the same time better outlets for
his produce and more recompense for his
labor, and on the whole, is so independent
on ten cents a day, that he will eat or store
his wheat rather than sell it below GER
tain price. Of course he does not employ
machinery in farming, but ploughs his
land with a crooked piece of iron-pointed
wood, harrows it with an implement re-
sembling common ladder laid fat on the
ground and dragged by the little bulIocks
crossways over the field; he sows by hand,
reaps with a rude sickle, carries the
sheaves home on his back or in the bull
lock cart, threshes them with wooden
club, or lets the cattle tramp out the grain,
and cleans it by hand-winnowing.
Under these conditions the ryot can
afford to sell his wheat at the nearest mar
ket place, if within days journey of his
home, for so to go cents per bushel; but
when it does not bring that price, or very
near it, he consumes his small supply or
stores it in hole under ground until a
more favorable time shall come, and when
it comes, he sells very short and uses mil
let and inferior grains for his family sub
sistence, so that q great elasticity in the
amount of surplus is constantly kept up
by the countless 3st of the ryots them
selves.
And this same course will necessarily be
pursued in the main for long time to
come, because the social and religious con-
dition of the agricultural classes is such
that 1t will take generations to make any
material change among them. Then again.
the cutting up of the land into small
patches to suit the rapidly increasing pop
-.