Dry farming in India [Book Review]

ON more than one fifth of India's total cultivable area crops have to be grown under conditions of precarious and inadequate rainfall. The area concerned exceeds seventy-seven million acres. A partial crop failure is a serious matter for the sixty million people who live there, and for many others outside who receive their food-grains from the affected areas. The danger has become steadily greater because of the continuous and rapid increase in the total population; not only are there more to be fed, but also the increasing pressure on the land has reduced the average area cultivated by one family on the better lands, and has caused more marginal land to be taken into cultivation and has thus intensified many technical difficulties inherent in the system of husbandry.

Dry Farming in India

By N. V. Kanitkar. (Imperial Council of Agricultural Research, Scientific Monograph No. 15.) Pp. x + 352. (Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1944.) 13.12 rupees; 21s. 6d.