British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 370

CHAPTER IX.

150. It is only in the third zone in which agriculture, other than on discontinuous patches in the wadi beds, is possible. This zone contains some 1,640,000 dunums of cultivable land and every dunum which can be economically sown is cultivated by the Beduin inhabitants (apart from some 90,000 dunums of Jewish laud). The Beduin are keen farmers and very much alive to possibilities of improving their agricultural methods. Tractor ploughing has made considerable strides within recent years and an increasing area is being planted each year with fruit trees. A considerable part of this comparatively fertile zone is covered by a block of shifting sand. Excavation has shown that there was already sand at Khalasa in the third to the fourth century A.D.

151. The area of the Negeb may accordingly be subdivided as follows:-

Dunums

Dunums

Zone (c) cultivable area uncultivable area Zones (a) and (b}

1,640.000 1,260,000

2,900,000 9,676,000 12,676,000

Total:

152. Yields in zone (c) are dependent on the weather and the area actually cultivated in any year also depends on the weather, since the inhabitants are chary of wasting seed. It is generally accepted that, over four years, the crops in this zone are a virtual failure in one on account of drought, are only partially successful in two years, while a full crop is produced only once in the course of the period. Thus, in a cycle of years, the cultivator only receives the average equivalent of one half of a crop each season.

153. The population of the Beersheba sub-district was estimated to be 51,082 at the 1931 census. Registration of births and deaths is not carried out among the Beduin so that the precise total of the present population of the zone. is not known. It will be evident, however, that even allowing only a conservative rate of increase the population is large in relation to the productivity of the area.

154. It will also be evident that the great obstacle in the way of increasing productivity jg the shortage of water; the rainfall is scanty and uncertain and investigations for underground supplies have proved extremely disappointing. The Partition Commission recommended that experiments be made in dry farming methods, in the conservation of surface water and with water boring tests with the object of ascertaining the possibilities of general development of the "occupied area", i.e. the region covered by zone (c) above. An attempt had been made in 1935 to store water by means of a

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