British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 274

CHAPTER VIII.

(e) Investigation of conditions at Bir Zeit (Jerusalem District).

Of the cultivation, 27.4 per cent. consisted of olive groves, 8.2 per cent. of figs and other fruit trees, 17 .8 per cent. of vines and 46.6 per cent. of cereals. The lot viable was 112 dunums and there were 115 families (out of a total of 180) in excess of the number which the village could actually support. The average indebtedness was about £P.39 per family.

114. Sir John Hope Simpson accordingly concluded that on unirrigated land the lot. viable is not less than 130 dunums, unless command of considerable capital enabled the tenant to maintain a dairy herd of foreign or cross-bred animals, in which case in the richer tracts, the holding may possibly, but questionably, be reduced to 100 dunums. Where irrigation is available and where dairying is possible, the holding may be reduced to 40 dunums of which half is irrigable. Where plantations are established the tot. viable, at the then current prices of oranges and bananas, might be placed at 15 to 20 dunums.

115. A number of schemes for improved mixed• farms were analysed in "Planned Mixed Farming" by Professor Elazari-Volcani of the Jewish Agency Agricultural Research Station (1938). The sizes of farms contemplated were consolidated holdings of between 35 dunums irrigated and 50 dunums , the latter either irrigated by rotation or including 10 dunums of irrigated land. The estimated cash surplus was between £P.76 and £P.10 for the family.

116. In 1938, for the purposes of the Partition Commission, the Department of Agriculture calculated the area which might reasonably be regarded as a lot viable appropriate to each category of laud as given in the Rural Property Tax Ordinance". These areas were as set out on the next page.

The Partition Commission, while noting that lower estimates of a lot viable bad in some cases been made, rejected the largely speculative assumptions on which the lower estimates had been founded and endorsed the Royal Commission's finding as recorrled above "that, until the contrary is proved by experience and practical experiment, the Administration will be wise in adhering to their own definition" (Report of the Partition Commission, chapter VIII, para. 143).
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* See section 4 of this chapter.

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