PRODUCTION
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As a result of restrictions on the export of certain products from China to the United States, New Territories farmers have developed a few export crops, such as water chestnuts and prepared vegetable and fruit products; but the increasing local demand for home-grown food limits the area that can be brought under export crops. This new development has, however, brought ready cash in certain zones, and broadened the economy of subsistence farming.
Ploughs, harrows, and hand-tools are of local origin and give good service. There is nothing to be gained by adopting costly western tractors and implements.
Where possible, two crops of rice are grown on irrigated land. The yield ranges from 30 times the seed on the best land, to 4 times on thin hill soils. In places with access to town, vegetables are often grown on a portion of the fallow, following the second rice crop. In other areas, after the second crop the land is spelled by adopting a form of land rotation for the area under catch-crops. The greater use of fallow land for catch-cropping depends on water supply and maintaining the soil's fertility by artificial means. Chemical fertilizers are used when they can be afforded, but on the whole reliance is placed on traditional fertilizers, such as nightsoil, bone meal, ashes, duck feathers, meal cakes and dried pulverized animal manure. Vegetable farmers (many of them immigrants who do not own paddy land) usually cultivate very small areas, seldom more than one acre, and depend entirely on fertilizers in order to make intensive use of their plots.
1955, due to the weather, was a particularly difficult year for farmers. In January there occurred the coldest spell in 50 years; heavy frost damaged sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and other less frost-resistant vegetables. The pro- longed drought that followed held up the sowing and transplanting of the year's first rice crop, and in the torrential downpours which came when the drought finally broke, large areas were flooded at Sheung Shui, Yuen Long, San Tin, Chuk Yuen, Shui Pin Wai, and Lam Ti, causing further losses of rice and vegetable crops. Added to this, much of the paddy was attacked by stem borers. It is estimated that the average loss on the first crop, due to these various reasons, was over 30%.