Power Farming in India

Abstract

THE Imperial Council of Agricultural Research in India has issued, as Scientific Monograph No. 9, a report by 0. P. G. Wade, on mechanical cultivation in India, prefaced by an approving foreword and an introduction, written by agricultural officers of the Government. The publication of the report in this form is of special interest, for the work has been inspired, financed and largely carried out by a commercial organisation, the Burmah-Shell Oil Storage and Distributing Co. It is difficult to see how the Government could have given official approval to work of this nature without raising awkward questions of precedent and policy, but for the existence of the Council, the constitution of which, as drawn up by the Linlithgow Commission on Indian Agriculture, was kept flexible and free from certain restrictions necessarily observed, by Government departments. Much of the work was done co-operatively with the agricultural departments of Provincial Governments. The scheme of work was conceived on broad and public-spirited lines; the Company cannot hope to recover its expenditure by any immediate increase in sales of oil; the most it can cxpsct is to share, in common with other industries, in the increased gtmoral prosperity that will accompany any lasting improvement in the agricultural conditions of rural India. Although the greater proportion of Indian cultivators farm under peasant conditions, and cannot directly take up power farming, the question of co-opcraLive use is worthy of attention; in addition, there seems a much larger scope for heavy power machinery on large holdings, for example, planters' estates, and in the reclamation and improvement, under Government supervision, of large areas. The report deals in detail with an extensive series of experiments on weed eradication by deep cultivation, on contract ploughing and on the analysis of costing data. The concluding chapters are devoted to a discussion of the design and performance of tractors and cultivation implements in relation to Indian conditions, and to the organisation of contract tractor ploughing.