Abstract

India has to maintain a dense population of over 200 per square mile, by methods of farming applicable only to tracks with shoul 2 persons to the square mile. The chief, and perhaps the only way to remedy the chronic under-nourishment of this dense population is by increasing the per capita consumption of milk and milk products. For this, a dove-lallin of arable and animal husbandries into one mixed-farming system in very urgently needed. As pointed out by Mr. Hilson in 1928; "the fodder problem in not only Madras, but the whole of India, is a vary important and a very urgent one. Better fodder means better cattle and more manure of better quality; this helps the farmer to raise better crops, get bigger profits and adopt a better standard of living as well as a higher level of mixed farming, with bigger and better fodder crops as an essential unit therein." The difficulty comes in, however, when one tries to formulate mixed-farming systems for all the widely varying conditions of climate and soils in India. For instance, in Sind and certain parts of the United Provinces, the introduc tion of irrigation into the existing dryland farming resulted in the deteriora- tion of the excellent breeds of cattle that thrived there before. For efficient milk production, the nutritive ratio of the feed, i. e., the ratio between the digestible crude proteins and the combined digestible fats and carbohyd. rates, should not be wider than 1:10. Since, the usually available cereal straws, such as paddy, wheat and raqi, have only a nutritive ratio of 1:70 and even the better kinds of green fodders like sorghun and guinea grass have a ratio of only 1: 12, the need for including legumes like lucerne and sunnhemp with a ratio of 1: 4, in the daily feed, would be obvious.

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