Abstract

For over a quarter of century now, Madras has been a deficit province in respect of her requirements of rice. The demand has increased faster than production, due to the natural increase of population and the substitution of rice in place of millets in the diet of the lower middle class and even the working classes in urban and industrial areas. The shortage was not felt as long as Burma was ready to send us rice at a price cheaper than our own cost of production. The flow of imports was suddenly stopped by the conditions of war; the havoe wrought was so great not only in Burma, but in Siam and Indo-China, next largest exporters of rice, that the surplus available is still too short to meet the demand of all Asiatic countries-India, China, Japan, Ceylon, etc. Here was a challenge to our Agricultural Department to raise production to the level of our requirements, which formed only 20 per cent above our production, while the Department claimed to produce on its farms more than double the average yield of the province and nearly as much as the high yield of China and Japan. In the United Kingdom, food production was accelerated in the course of a few years of war by 30 or 40 per cent above the normal. Why could five years of strenuous and expensive propaganda and State-aid not raise the total yield by more than a few lakhs of tons?

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