Excerpt from The Bases of Agricultural Practice: And Economics in the United Provinces, India
My friend, Mr. Martin Leake, has asked me to write a foreword to this volume, and I do so with much pleasure.
The work is based on the lectures delivered by the author when Principal of the Cawnpore Agricultural College, and is a valuable contribution to the study of Indian Agricultural Economics. There is an extraordinary tendency in India to get into water-tight compartments, and in nothing is such a policy more disastrous than in the teaching of agriculture. Agriculture taught as so many physical, chemical or botanical facts is but dry bones. To vitalise and energise the teaching of agriculture one must show how agriculture fits in with the ordinary economic system, and it is only as we can show its bearing on life as it is that we can expect teaching to be effective.
Again, it is of no avail to improve the outturn of the land if a business organisation does not exist to guarantee to the cultivator the full value of any improvements he may adopt. Thus, with "better farming" we must also have "better business" if the combination is to result in "better living." Till the cultivator can get facilities for the favourable disposal of his products, he is merely a producing machine at the mercy of any unscrupulous person who cares to exploit him. Fortunately the means of emancipation are now within his reach, and the co-operative movement - the underlying principles of which are very lucidly described by Mr. Leake - is rapidly gaining ground in India. The power of the village moneylender, whose business methods are ruthlessly exposed, is lessening, and we may hope that erelong the Indian cultivator will have the healthy stimulus to production which an assured and fair price guarantees.
The main feature of Mr. Leake's work is the emphasis of the economic aspect. Agriculture is depicted in its relation to the facts of life and to the community, or social fabric, as a whole.
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