The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 216)

غرض

عنوان

The Dispossession of the Peasantry (ص 216)

المحتوى

200
For most of the Arab peasants, unlike the Jewish European farmers, the
main obstacles to fodder cultivation included the lack of sufficient land to set aside
for that purpose and the lack of water or the capital resources for irrigation.
Available land was needed for the subsistence-necessary cereal growing. There was
also the necessity of keeping the land fallow during the summer months and the
fact that fodder was a soil-exhausting crop that would result in lower grain yield in
winter.®° All this perhaps explains the failure of government efforts to foster the
cultivation of green fodder, without providing the necessary resources.*!
Thus, the cattle, sheep, goats, and other animals of Arab peasants were fed
on natural grazing and stubble. In years of good rainfall, this was, more or less,
adequate. In drought years, and especially during the summer months, the animals
faced starvation.” However, Arab peasants did cultivate nonirrigated fodder such
as barley, kersemeh, and so on predominantly in the southern region where rainfall
is the lowest in the country and yields are relatively poor. Given this situation, it
was only the plow animals that were fed this cultivated fodder.®* This was a good
example of the rationale behind the setting of priorities by the peasants. Still, the
production of nonirrigated fodder did increase by more than twofold in the late
thirties and early forties as compared to earlier years, which reflected and
Kamen, 223.
See Ibid., 219-31, for a fuller treatment of the government’s efforts and the
peasants’ attitude towards it.
Brown, “Agriculture,” 173, 177.
“Tbid., 190.
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The Dispossession of the Peasantry

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المنشئ

Riyad Mousa

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