Winter rye is the main crop, summer wheat, millet, oats and sunflower seed come next and potatoes are increasingly grown. Barley forms a very small percentage of the harvest. The prov ince has not yet recovered from the terrible 1917-21 years, though conditions have improved rapidly in the last two or three years. There is a fair amount of stock raising in the district, sheep and working cattle occupy the first place and horses and pigs are also bred, but on the whole this is a diminishing industry. Cucum bers, melons, water-melons, and vegetables are grown around Saratov, Volsk, Atkarsk and Kamyshin, and in the Novo-Uzensk district. Beetroot cultivation is increasing.
Poultry raising of an export character is carried on, but dairy produce is not much developed. Fishing and the preparation of caviare are important at Kamyshin. A more intensive develop ment of cattle breeding for meat and dairy purposes would lead to greater development of local production of bran and cattle foods, with a probable development of the bacon industry in dependence on by-products from the dairying industry. Flour milling is the main industry, oil-pressing from oleaginous seeds is an export industry and there is some tobacco manufacture. There are metal works dependent on the local iron, and the State electrification scheme includes the development of a shale using electric plant at Saratov to supplement the small station now working. The shale is to be obtained from the Kashpir beds near
Syzran and can be brought cheaply by water.
The railway net includes the line from Tambov to Kamyshin, with a branch linking with Penza, a line from Tambov to Saratov, one from Volsk on the Volga going through Petrovsk and Atkarsk to Balanda, part of the Penza-Syzran line, and the branch from the Volga through Novo-Uzensk to Alexandrov-Gai. The region is thus better supplied than the Samara province and has a good deal of transit trade between shipping and railway lines.
The rate of literacy is considerably higher than in the Samara province, though it is low amongst women. Saratov university helps to spread a higher standard of culture in the district. The chief towns are Saratov, Balachov, Volsk and Kuznetsk (qq.v.), the remaining centres having less than 20,000 inhabitants.
The district of Saratov has been inhabited since at least the Neolithic period. The inhabitants of a later epoch have left numerous bronze remains in their kurgans (burial-mounds) but their ethnological position is still uncertain. In the 8th and 9th centuries the semi-nomad Burtases peopled the territory and recognized the authority of the Khazar princes.