British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 310

CHAPTER IX.

which can be leached of salts; the hot climate permits of the growth of tropical crops on productive soils under heavy irrigation. The Beersheba plateau, the largest stretch of plain land in the country, is of loess (wind-blown) formation; it is "good barley land" in winters of sufficient rainfall, but the rainfall is so fickle that in many years no harvest at all is possible.

(b) Crops and cropping.

4. Cereal growing is the most important activity of the majority of Arab cultivators. The rotations vary from (a) barley every year, as on the light lands in the dry Beersheba area, to (b) a two year course by which winter crops of wheat or barley are rotated with summer crops of dura (millet) or sesame, and to (c) a three year rotation in which a legume is introduced as an additional winter crop. The following is the most common rotation :--

Sown November-December and harvested May-June, followed by a

until the following April when the land is sown with

which is harvested in August and followed again by wheat or barley (or by a legume in a three-year rotation).

It is not possible to grow an economic summer crop without a preceding winter fallow to conserve the necessary amount of soil moisture.

Wheat or barley

.Bare fallow

Dura or sesame

In many Jewish settlements a four-year rotation has been adopted so. as to include a green manure "or hay or a silage crop. The rotations for irrigated lands are necessarily more varied and complex.

5. Wheat and barley are the chief winter cereal crops. Wheat is usually grown on the heavier types of soil, while barley is grown on the lighter soils, particularly in the south and in Beersheba, where not only is the rainfall much lower than in the north but the rainy season is also shorter. The total area under both crops is estimated by the Department of Agriculture to exceed 4,500,000 dunums, the actual areas varying annually according to weather and rotation; the proportions under each crop are approximately equal.

6. Winter leguminous crops consist of lentils, peas, beans and kersenneh (Vioia ervilia). Some vetch is also grown but it is now more usual to sow vetch with oats (or barley) for the production

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