The spring farming season is now at its busiest on the Tibetan Plateau. The peasants are busy ploughing, sowing or cultivating the young crops. This will be the fifth harvest they are working for since the overthrow of feudal serfdom and the introduction of democratic reforms in 1959.

In the agricultural areas in the warm eastern and southern parts, the crops sown earlier this spring are already sprouting. In the Lhasa and Loka districts, the peasants have to date sown one-third of their farmland.　In the Shigatse and Gyantse regions, where the climate is colder, sowing has just begun and is steadily spreading northwards as the weather gets warmer. In Phari, Tibet's highest district where the planting of crops was introduced only after the democratic reforms,　the peasants are getting everything ready, determined not to lose a minute when the time comes for ploughing and sowing.

Though, as a result of the cold weather, sowing this year is somewhat later than last year, the Tibetan peasants are optimistic about garnering another good harvest this year. They have good reasons to be so.

Co-operative　 farming,　 for　 one thing, has been of enormous help to them in developing their farms. The rural areas of the region today have 25,000 mutual-aid teams, embracing 187,000 peasant households. Another favourable condition is the extension of irrigation. Over 30,000 water conservancy projects have been completed in the last four years since the democratic reforms began; this has brought irrigation to 60 per cent of the region's farmland.

Before the spring farming season started this year, the state shipped hundreds of thousands of iron and steel farming implements to the region. Over the past few years such modern implements have replaced practically all the primitive wooden tools the peasants were accustomed to use in the past. Besides receiving new farm tools from other provinces, Tibet has built itself eight plants which ensure a steady supply of modern tools to its farmers.

In addition to these and other favourable conditions, the government has extended loans amounting to 1.4million yuan to the Tibetan peasants. They are using these funds to buy draught animals and other things they need to make this year another good one for agriculture in Tibet.

(This article appears on page 6, No. 19, 1963)