Abstract

"Food will continue to be a weapon in all efforts towards ensuring a more orderly, prosperous and peaceful country". Thus spoke Roosevelt, one of the greatest of statesmen. There is also the recent warning by the Food and Agricultural Organization that the production deficit of rice in the world would continue for the next three years. The 1947-1948 production has attained the pre-war level but this is not sufficient to keep pace with the growing world population and by 1950, the gap between production and consumption is estimated to be of the order of 14 million tons.. It is our duty, as a body of workers striving to improve the food production of the country to leave no stone unturned in bridging the gap between production and the demand for food crops. Let us see what the position of rice is like in the Madras Presidency. Rice occupies about 10-7 million acres and the production for 1947-48 was 4 million tons against a normal production figure of 4-9 million tons. The annual requirements at 12 oz. ration for the total population of the province, taking the 1941 census figures, come to 5-3 million tons. The apparent deficit of 4 lakhs of tons of rice (working out to 8% of the normal production) might seem to be quite a small one but the problem of making it up is not quite so simple. In spite of strenuous attempts in the Grow-Food-Campaign it has to be admitted that the deficit is still there. This lack of success has been ascribed to various causes such as (1) the objectives being too. diversified and (2) the farmer not being approached and tackled in the right manner; but, for our purpose it is only necessary to examine how far and in what directions better results could be achieved in the matter of increasing the output of rice in the country.

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