Abstract

The depression is felt everywhere. The average farmer generally falls an easy victim to it because he is improvident, ignorant, conser- vative and uneconomical in his dealings. He is unable to say what his cost of producing 1000 lbs. of paddy is. Without exactly knowing what it is, he is selling the produce to the highest bidder who offers a price per cartload, say, 1000 lbs. The purchaser fully realises the fact that his prices are always lower than the ordinary wholesale market rates and he is sure of a margin of profit in his business. On account of the quick and easy transport facilities, the Indian producer who is following the time-honoured crude and apparently cheap but on the whole costly ways of farming, has to compete with the up-to-date civilised farmer of the West who adopts the latest labour-saving appliances in his pro- duction with due regard to economy. The civilised farmer always stops producing any commodity when he finds that the trade is not prepared to pay him at least his cost price. The Indian farmer not knowing what his cost price is and following his time-honoured ways and pinning his faith to the same old crops, does not know whether he actually loses or gets a profit when he sells his produce at a given rate per unit.

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