Volume 1

Evidence of officers serving under the Government of India.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on Agriculture in India.
Date:
1927-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evidence of officers serving under the Government of India. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/442 (page 27)
    APPENDIX 4. BULLETIN No. 13 or 1921. The Organisation of the Department of Agriculture. 1. For administrative purposes the Provinces have been divided up inte Uircles. At present there are three circles, namely, (1) the Southern Circle eomprising the Chhattisgarh Division and all the Nagpur Division except Wardha district, Sausar tahsil of Chhindwara district, and Warora tahsil of Chanda district, (2) the Western Circle comprising all Berar Division, Wardha and Nimar districts and Warora tahsil of Chanda district, and (3) the Northern Circle comprising all the Nerbudda and Jubbulpore Divisions except Nimar district and Sausar tahsil of Chhindwara district. 2. The Director of Agriculture is responsible for the administration of the Department as a whole. In consultation with his experts he decides the lines of work to be taken up by each, the staff required to do that work and the extent to which different experts can co-operate in solving any special problem. He inspects at intervals the experimental and research work being done on the experimental farms and the extension work being carried out in the districts, points cut any mistakes which have been made and suggests ways and means of overcoming difficulties. 3. In charge of each circle there is a Deputy Director of Agriculture assisted by a staff of Extra Assistant Directors, Agricultural Assistants and kamdars. The Deputy Director controls all the experimental work of his circle, and with the assistance of his Extra-Assistant Directors organises all the extension work including the supply of seeds and implements, field demon- strations, tahsil agricultural associations, etc. Agricultural Assistants are employed on Government farms and in supervising extension work in the districts. In immediate charge of demonstration work in the villages there are trained kamdars, 4, The existing circles are so very large and the activities of the depart- ment have increased so much within the last ten years that the three Deputy Directors now find it very difficult to exercise proper control over the un- wieldy charges allotted to them. The three existing circles are therefore to be divided into seven circles as soon as sufficient staff to run them is available. The work of the department has increased enormously during the last ten years. Within that time the number of experimental farms has increased from 4 to 9, the number of seed and demonstration farms from 1 to 11, the number of cattle-breeding farms from 2 to 12, including two dairy farms, and the number of implements and parts of implements sold annually by the depéts of the Department from 280 to 1,832. The quantity of improved seed of the selected varieties supplied by Government farms annually has, within . the same time, risen from 84,246 to 405,652 pounds and the quantity of sugar-cane seed from 24,370 to 420,534 whole canes. Nearly all the seed raised on Government farms is handed over to the owners of private seed farms who propagate it and sell the produce to their neighbours and others. In this connection expansion within the last ten years has been extraordinarily rapid, as may be gathered from the fact that the quantity of seed distributed annually through these private agencies has risen within that time from a few thousand to nearly 48 lakhs of pounds, and the number of canes from a few hundreds to over 342,000. — 5. This is only a small part of what has been accomplished in the last ten years, for during that period a considerable number of small demonstration plots have been started, tahsil agricultural associations have been opened in about two-thirds of the tahsils of the Provinces, and the department has gradually got into touch with a large body of cultivators. The activities of the department have, in short, grown to such an extent within the last ten years that it is becoming increasingly difficult with our present staff to contral