PRIMARY PRODUCTION AND MARKETING
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payment of a premium, provided the building will not interfere with any rural development or country town plan.
New Territories land policy follows the same general lines as that for the urban area, particularly in the towns and in areas required for industrial development. In the more rural parts the New Territories Administration is primarily con- cerned with preserving a balance between the sometimes conflicting needs of agricultural production on the one side, and of urban development on the other.
Some account has to be taken of the fact that much of the best land is owned by clans established in the area for hundreds of years. By tradition a proportion of the rent raised from clan land is set aside by the clans themselves for the upkeep of ancestral halls and observances, for purposes of clan welfare, and the maintenance of schools. Such land may not be disposed of without the written consent of all the clan members, sometimes numbering many hundreds, and the permission of the District Officer, who will not allow the clan holding to be reduced unless he is satisfied that it is in the best interests of the clan, and of the neighbourhood.
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Rents and values of agricultural land in the New Territories are customarily reckoned in paddy, convertible into money, in case a crop other than rice is grown, at the market rate of a specified variety. Crown Rents, however, are collected in cash at a rate fixed when the lease was granted. Most Crown Rents have thus progressively declined in relation to the customary value of agricultural land, and in some cases are now hardly worth the trouble of collection.
An average rent for rice land would be about 1,600 lbs. of paddy per acre per annum, or about 40% of the total annual yield from two crops. Though much of the land is owned by clans, individual holdings are uniformly small, averaging under two acres. There are very few farmers who cultivate more than five acres. Where land is rented it is usually on annual tenancy, and often the arrangement between landlord and tenant is verbal.