TheImprovement ofTropical and Subtropical Rangelands

800 IMPROVEMENT OF TROPIOAL AND SUBTROPIOAL RANGELANDS
There are leeches, ticks, and mosquitoes as well, and much of this
tract was highly malarial until the disease was controlled shortly
after the Second World War (Gadgill and Mahlotra, 1982).
Agriculture
Cultivation of paddy in fields kept flooded with water during the
monsoon is the dominant form of agriculture in this tract, but there
are also coconut and arecanut (also known as betelnut) orchards. A
special variety of paddy is cultivated in the brackish waters in the
estuaries, a form of cultivation requiring little labor beyond broadcasting
seed and harvesting grain. The arecanut orchards in the hills
are multistoried plantations with pepper vines trained onto the arecanut
trees and banan~nstitutinga middle canopyj cardamom
forms the ground layer. Only occuionally are hill slopes cultivated,
and then usually with millet species such as Eleuitae CONcana. The
leached soils in this region of high rainfall are nutrient poor, and there
is a tradition of adding substantial quantities of organic manure in
paddy fields as well as in orchards. This manure consists of loppings
ofleaves from forest shrubs and trees and dung ofdomestic livestock.
The only cultivated lands to which no such manure is applied are the
estuarine landsj the river silt yearly deposited on such lands is rich
in nutrients.
Animal Husbandry
A few chickens are maintained by all meat-eating communities of
the tract. All of the farmers maintain a few cattle and often buffalos.
These largely serve to convert grass on which they graze into dung,
used as organic manure. The production ofmilk is quite low. There is
also little demand for animal power in paddy cultivation and coconut
and arecanut orchards, nor is there much use of bullock carts for
transport due to the hilly nature of the terrain. Only in recent years
has goat keeping been introduced to this tract. Havugalla, a nomadic
community, uses donkeys as beasts of burden, and in earlier days,
some horses were used for transport.
HUMAN COMMUNITIES
Endogamous Cute Groups
As in much of India, the society consists of a large number