Agricultural geography of the United Provinces

An attempt has been made in the following pages to present a survey of the agricultural conditions and practices in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh as controlled by the geographical factors. The provinces cover an area of 112,191 square miles including the Native States of Tehri, Rampur and Benares and has a population of 49,614,833. The corresponding figures for the British Isles reveal that the two countries are ideal for comparison regarding the size and population. The size of U. P. is a bit smaller and the population a shade larger. The general density of population therefore is higher than that of the British Isles, but the distribution of population in the two countries could not be more dissimilar. The U. P. has 11.2 per cent of urban and 88.8 per cent of rural population whereas the figures are practically reversed in the case of the British Isles, being 80 per cent urban and 20 per cent rural population. This shows that the country under the present inquiry is predominantly agricultural as opposed to industrial British Isles.

The object of this inquiry is first to analyse the physical aspects of the country, its climate and soil. The next attempt is to analyse the human efforts towards the improvement of soil by irrigation, rìanures and rotation of crops, etc., and finally how he has tried to free himself from the vagaries of weather by irrigating fields where rains have been in defect or draining the fields where they xi= have been in excess. Soil, water - supply and physical aspect of a country are the main factors which govern the production of an agricultural country and hence an effort of study and analysis has been made on these limiting factors. The present agricultural practices have been analysed and the influence of physical aspects on the agricultural settlement has been discussed. The ease of communication in the form of roads and railways has also been discussed because on this depends the economic aspect of agricultural industry. The country being predominantly an agricultural one, main crops and the cattle problems have been studied on the basis of agricultural regions. Finally a review has been made how the development of agriculture could be made on modern improved lines to solve the the problem of /teeming millions of its population and how far the present methods of agriculture are fulfilling the obligations of its peoples who are directly or indirectly dependent for their living on the soil and art of agriculture.

The chief feature of the present inquiry has been the preparation of maps to show the real economic and agriculture al conditions and also to show the dependence of agriculture on its physical basis and how far human efforts have succeed. ed in mitigating the vagaries of nature and remedying the evils caused. It will not be out of place to give an idea of time and labour involved in the preparation of these mans. The land utilization map 1/M has been made from about 250 sheets of half -inch maps which has involved a labour of more than a month. The original soil maps of the eight districts prepared on the basis of rental value from the settlement reports have taken about two months as this has involved a study of about 70 settlement reports beginning from the second half of the last century, The climatic and agricultural regions similarly have involved a lot of time on the part of the writer. The working of the statistical averages to prepare the agricultural maps took him no less than three months.

Summing up, the most important point in the improvement of agriculture is funds and as soon as these are available, it is hoped that the channels of improvement will 1 be tapped. Different commissions on agriculture from time to time have pointed out the needs, and these have been 312. carried out as far as funds have allowed. It can therefore be affirmed that the Province has always taken a right lead towards agricultural improvement and has been successful in fulfilling its obligations to the 50,000,00 of its population.