Editorial

Abstract

Plantation Crops : At their 52nd annual gathering the U.P.A.S.I HAVE plaeaded for an-round relief.The small cultivator has perhaps for the first time in his life,been able to make a clear profit.With this he has to now clear himself of long accumulated debt and rebuild his deplated stock of implements and cattle.rebuild his home and also the fertility of his soil.Certainly he has a cause to graumble,since his profits are only short lived unlike those of the other industries.He is the back bone of the country and on his welfare and prosperity lies the prosperity of the country.With the plantation crops the case is not entirely so.The industry from the beginning was built up in a manner that it depended on foreign countries for its prodperity.So long the British Empire dominated the world and empire preference and vested interests lay with India a monopoly was created.Now that Tropical Australia and South Africa have been rapidly developing these same plantation crops preference will slowly and surely vest to those countries,especially with regard to tea,jute and coffee.Though an internal market has been created in India for coffee and tea it is not large enough to consume the surplus,especially,in tea.The situation has to be therefore,reviewed whether preference should not e given to such plantation crops in which is India is dependent on forign countries crops like rubber,cloves,jute and pepper to certain extent Climatic ansd soil conditions conducive to the growth of rubber and cloves are available in south India from Travancore to Northernmost coffee belt in Mysore.Rubber has been tried and grown in this areas.It is gratifying to note that the Central Government have taken steps to develop and protect this important civil and wartime material.The planter deserves relief and encouragement in effeting its expansion ,since he deals with a long -term crop and his capital gets locked up.Research work has to be encouraged in all the plantation crops and if India has to maintain her present place in the open market tomorrow,her produce will have to be cheap and of the best quality.We earnestly hope that with concentration on quality production through research and the co-operation of labour the object will be achieved.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.194974

Pages

415 - 416

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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