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Farmers generally have shown great enthusiasm for cooperative enterprises. Three vegetable marketing societies have been registered and several more are almost ready for registration. Pig breeders and poultry farmers are also showing interest.
Among the fisherfolk where cooperative education schemes, banks and marketing schemes are badly needed, progress has been much more difficult. This is chiefly because at the moment the Hong Kong fishing community is far from stable and not until international conditions have settled down can any large-scale improvement be expected.
Work in other fields, especially in cooperative education, is progressing favourably and many other sections of the community, including those in the urban areas, are being contacted and are already asking for advice on various cooperative schemes.
Forestry
Hong Kong is not a timber producing territory; it is in fact the largest timber importer in the Far East. The Colony's hills are covered with grass, scrub and sparse pinewood. The grass on the hillsides is of great importance to villagers who are largely dependent on it for fuel for cooking purposes, the cutting of wild wood being strictly controlled throughout the Colony. There are large areas, particularly to the west of the New Territories, which are badly eroded, some of the hillsides having no protective covering at all.
One of the main activities of the Forestry Department is the afforestation and protection of the catchment areas for the Colony's 13 reservoirs on which the water supply of the entire population depends. Most of the hillsides are very steep and rainfall is principally in the summer months. This makes the maintenance of a proper forest covering in catchment areas of great importance not only to prevent the silting up of the reservoirs but also to increase the seepage which, if proper planting is carried out, can be extended after the rainy season is finished.
The legacy of the Japanese occupation of the Colony during the war which will take more time to remedy than any other is the wholesale despoliation of the Colony's trees. One place where this was particularly obvious was in the neighbourhood of Kowloon reservoir where severe surface erosion was taking place in the catchment areas. Extensive planting of eucalyptus and tristania was carried out shortly after the war to establish a forest covering on the lowest slopes near the reservoir and this planting continued in each successive year, being gradually extended up the hillsides, this particular process being followed because weather conditions on the hilltops are too severe to support any
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