AGRICULTURE AND CROPS
Classification by Zones.—In order to give an intelligible account of the huge area embraced by the Panjáb, N.W.F. Province, and Kashmír it is necessary to make a division of the area into zones. Classification must be on very broad lines based on differences of altitude, rainfall, and soil, leading to corresponding differences in the cultivation and the crops. For statistical purposes districts must be taken as a whole, though a more accurate classification would divide some of them between two zones.
Classes of Cultivation.—The broadest division of cultivation is into irrigated and unirrigated, the former including well (cháhí), canal (nahrí), and ábí. The last term describes a small amount of land watered from tanks or jhíls in the plains and a larger area in the hills irrigated by kuhls or small artificial channels. "Unirrigated" embraces cultivation dependent on rain (bárání) or on flooding or percolation from rivers (sailáb). (See Table II.)
Harvests.—There are two harvests, the autumn or kharíf, and the spring or rabí. The autumn crops are mostly sown in June and July and reaped from September to December. Cotton is often sown in March. Cane planted in March and cut in January and February is counted as a kharíf crop. The spring crops are sown from the latter part of September to the end of December. They are reaped in March and April. Roughly in the Panjáb three-fifths of the crops belong to the spring harvest. In the N.W.F. Province the proportion is somewhat higher. In Kashmír the autumn crop is by far the more important.
Fig. 48. Persian Wheel Well and Ekka.
Implements of Husbandry and Wells.—The implements of husbandry are simple but effective in a land where as a rule there is no advantage in stirring up the soil very deep. With his primitive plough (hal) and a wooden clodcrusher (sohága) the peasant can produce a tilth for a crop like cane which it would be hard to match in England. There are two kinds of wells, the charsa or rope and bucket well and the harat or Persian wheel.
Rotations.—The commonest rotation in ordinary loam soils is to put in a spring and autumn crop in succession and then let the land lie fallow for a year. Unless a good deal of manure is available this is the course to follow, even in the case of irrigated land. Some poor hard soils are only fit for crops of coarse rice sown after the embanked fields have been filled in the monsoon by drainage from surrounding waste. Other lands are cropped only in the autumn because the winter rainfall is very scanty. Flooded lands are often sown only for the spring harvest.
Fig. 49. A drove of goats—Lahore.
Cattle, Sheep, and Goats.—In 1909 there were in the British districts of the Panjáb 4¼ million bullocks and 625,000 male buffaloes available to draw 2,169,000 ploughs and 288,000 carts, thresh the corn, and work a quarter of a million wells, besides sugar, oil, and flour mills. The cattle of the hills, N.W. Panjáb, and riverain tracts are undersized, but in the uplands of the Central Panjáb and S.E. districts fine oxen are used. The horned cattle share 18 millions of pasture land, much extremely poor, with 4 million sheep and 5½ million goats. Hence the enormous area devoted to fodder crops.
Zones.—Six zones can be distinguished, but, as no district is wholly confined to the mountain zone, it must for statistical purposes be united to the submontane zone:
| (a) (b) | Mountain above 5000 feet Submontane | {Panjáb—Kángra, Simla, Native States in Hills, Ambála, Hoshyárpur. { {N.W.F. Province. Hazára, Kashmír—whole |
| (c) | North Central Plain | Panjáb—Gujrát, Siálkot, Gurdáspur,Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiána, Kapúrthala, Malerkotla, Powádh tract in Phulkian States. |
| (d) | North-West Area | Panjáb—Ráwalpindí, Jhelam,Attock, Mianwálí. N.W.F.P.—Pesháwar, Kohát, Bannu. |
| (e) | South-Western Plains | Panjáb—Gujránwála, Lahore,Sháhpur, Jhang, Lyallpur, Montgomery, Multán, Muzaffargarh, Dera GházíKhán, Baháwalpur. N.W.F.P.—Dera Ismail Khán. |
| (f) | South-Eastern Area | Panjáb—Karnál, Rohtak, Gurgáon,Hissár, Ferozepore, Farídkot, Jangal tract inPhulkian States, Native States territory adjoining Gurgáon and Rohtak. |
Mountain and Submontane Zones.—In the Mountain Zone the fields are often very minute, consisting of narrow terraces supported by stone revetments built up the slopes of hills. That anyone should be ready to spend time and labour on such unpromising material is a sign of pressure of population on the soil, which is a marked feature of some hill tracts.
Fig. 50. A steep bit of hill cultivation, Hazára.
Below 8000 feet the great crop is maize. Potatoes have been introduced near our hill stations. The chief pulse of the mountain zone is kulath (Dolichos biflorus), eaten by the very poor. Wheat ascends to 8000 or 9000 feet, and at the higher levels is reaped in August. Barley is grown at much greater heights. Buckwheat (úgal, trúmba, dráwí), amaranth (chauláí, ganhár, sariára), and a tall chenopod (bathu) are grown in the mountain zone. Buckwheat is common on poor stony lands.
Fig. 51. Preparing rice field in the Hills.
The only comparatively flat land is on the banks above river beds, which are devoted to rice cultivation, the water being conducted to the embanked fields by an elaborate system of little canals or kuhls. This is the only irrigation in the mountains, and is much valued. The Submontane Zone has a rainfall of from 30 to 40 inches. Well irrigation is little used and the dry crops are generally secure. Wheat and maize are the great staples, but gram and charí, i.e. jowár grown for fodder, are also important. Some further information about Kashmír agriculture will be found in a later chapter. For full details about classes of cultivation and crops in all the zones Tables II, III and IV should be consulted.
North Central Panjáb Plain.—The best soils and the finest tillage are to be found in the North Central Zone. Gujrát has been included in it, though it has also affinities in the north with the North-West area, and in the south with the South-Western plain. The rainfall varies from 25 to 35 inches. One-third of the cultivated area is protected by wells, and the well cultivation is of a very high class in Ludhiána and Jalandhar, where heavily manured maize is followed by a fine crop of wheat, and cane is commonly grown. In parts of Siálkot and Gujrát the well cultivation is of a different type, the area served per well being large and the object being to protect a big acreage of wheat in the spring harvest. The chief crops in this zone are wheat and charí. The latter is included under "Other Fodder" in Tables III and IV.
North-Western Area.—The plateau north of the Salt Range has a very clean light white sandy loam soil requiring little ploughing and no weeding. It is often very shallow, and this is one reason for the great preference for cold weather crops. Kharíf crops are more liable to be burned up. Generally speaking the rainfall is from 15 to 25 inches, the proportion falling in the winter and spring being larger than elsewhere. There is, except in Pesháwar and Bannu, where the conditions involve a considerable divergence from the type of this zone, practically no canal irrigation. The well irrigation is unimportant and in most parts consists of a few acres round each well intensively cultivated with market-gardening crops. The dry crops are generally very precarious. In Mianwálí the Indus valley is a fine tract, but the harvests fluctuate greatly with the extent of the floods. The Thal in Mianwálí to the south of the Sind Ságar railway is really a part of the next zone.
The South-Western Plains.—This zone contains nine districts. With the exception of the three on the north border of the zone they have a rainfall of from 5 to 10 inches. Of these six arid districts, only one, Montgomery, has any dry cultivation worth mentioning. In the zone as a whole three-fourths of the cultivation is protected by canals or wells, or by both. In the lowlands near the great rivers cultivation depends on the floods brought to the land direct or through small canals which carry water to parts which the natural overflow would not reach. In the uplands vast areas formerly untouched by the plough have been brought under tillage by the help of perennial canals, and the process of reclamation is still going on. The Thal is a large sandy desert which becomes more and more worthless for cultivation as one proceeds southwards. In the north the people have found out of late years that this unpromising sand can not only yield poor kharíf crops, but is worth sowing with gram in the spring harvest. The expense is small, and a lucky season means large profits. In Dera Ghází Khán a large area of "pat" below the hills is dependent for cultivation on torrents. The favourite crop in the embanked fields into which the water is diverted is jowár.
The South-Eastern Plains.—In the south-eastern Panjáb except in Hissár and the native territory on the border of Rájputána, the rainfall is from 20 to 30 inches. In Hissár it amounts to some 15 inches. These are averages; the variations in total amount and distribution over the months of the year are very great. In good seasons the area under dry crops is very large, but the fluctuations in the sown acreage are extraordinary, and the matured is often far below the sown area. The great crops are gram and mixtures of wheat or barley with gram in the spring, and bájra in the autumn, harvest. Well cultivation is not of much importance generally, though some of it in the Jamna riverain is excellent. The irrigated cultivation depends mainly on the Western Jamna and Sirhind canals, and the great canal crops are wheat and cotton. This is the zone in which famine conditions are still most to be feared.
In the Panjáb as a whole about one-third of the cultivated area is yearly put under wheat, which with bájra and maize is the staple food of the people. A large surplus of wheat and oil-seeds is available for export.
Fig. 52. Carved doorway.