Fallows must be interpreted widely, i.e., as land occupied for cultivation. It is not necessarily economically cultivable.
Irrigation in Sind is virtually synonymous with canal irrigation. Thus the total area irrigated from all sources in 1925-26 was 3,016,000 acres. The above figures indicate an increase in the area watered, but they also point to the fluctuating nature of the supply. Significant agricultural progress in the province must wait upon the replacement of the present capricious water supply by assured quantities. The primary object of the Sukkur barrage is to effect this. (See INDIAN DESERT.) There are two principal cultivating seasons, kharif and rabi. In general, the former ex tends normally from the beginning of June to the end of October, and coincides for the first three months with the height of the Indus inundation. Ordinarily, the rabi season covers the period early October to the close of March. The chief kharif crops are rice, millets (bajri and jowar) and cotton. Wheat, pulses, oil seeds, barley and vegetables constitute the main rabi sowings.
Rice, the main crop, occupies in an average crop year about I+ million acres. It is particularly identified with two tracts; one in northern Sind centring in Larkana, where the finest is grown, and the other in southern Sind, centring in Hyderabad. The former accounts for about one-third, the latter a good one fif th, of the total rice acreage. Bajri and jowar are the main food of the working classes. The former is the more wholesome, and occupies about a million acres, while jowar is grown over about half this area. Thar and Parkar is the main seat of bajri; jowar is identified particularly with northern Sind. Here also wheat is found, which rivals jowar in the area it normally occupies. Other cereals are insignificant. Among pulses, matar (chickling vetch), grown in northern districts, is the chief. Rape and jambho (a variety of mustard) are noteworthy oilseeds; they are fairly wide spread outside the desert, and the average area occupied by the two crops together exceeds 300,00o acres. Cotton stands fourth in area among kharif crops, being surpassed by rice, bajri and jowar only. It is grown on about 400,000 ac., and is limited entirely to the left bank of the Indus, where it reaches its maxi mum development under the Eastern Nara canal system.
Investigations have been recommended into possibilities of cotton cultivation, when the Sukkur barrage extends irrigation, to the west of the Indus, in spite of the great heat.
Grasses and fodder crops are less important for the Sind pas toralist than shrubs and trees. The best milch cows of Sind are famous, and much sought after throughout India, and her buffa loes, sustained on the swampy tracts in the delta, are the basis of a large export of ghi (clarified butter). The camel—the main beast of burden in the province—thrives on salt marsh feed, and the abundance of poor dry land, together with the hilly tracts, support large sheep and goat herds. Small hardy horses are also in evidence, and Upper Sind breeds mares. Mules, asses and bullocks are well represented.