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PRIMARY PRODUCTION
12,700,000 pounds of milk were produced during 1960, valued at $11,430,000.
Farmers are increasingly using the livestock advisory services of the Department. The Colony continued to be free from rabies and rinderpest, and the incidence of foot and mouth disease, both in local and imported stock, was much less; there were 216 outbreaks of a mild type of this disease in cattle and pigs in the New Territories. 40,000 pigs were inoculated against swine fever and 12,000 cattle were inoculated against rinderpest with locally produced vaccine. 11,500,000 doses of Ranikhet vaccine and 3,000,000 doses of Intranasal Drop vaccine were used for the prevention of Newcastle disease in poultry.
FORESTRY
The Agriculture and Forestry Department is responsible for forestry generally and more directly for afforestation of the water catchment areas, protection of vegetation on Crown Lands, assistance to village forestry, and amenity planting. A thick cover of vegetation is essential in the catchment areas to prevent silting of reservoirs and erosion, and to help streams to flow more regularly by inducing as much water as possible to remain in the soil. Well-managed forests are the ideal way to achieve this. Elsewhere forestry can provide timber and fuel for local con- sumption and improve the rural economy. In fact, forestry is probably the most suitable form of extensive land development possible in those three quarters of the New Territories which comprise steep hills, woodlands or scrub.
It is only in recent years that any serious attempt has been made to carry out afforestation in the New Territories on a large scale; and the landscape is now undergoing a noticeable change as plantations become established. The hills are predominantly grass covered, with a thicker cover of shrubs in some areas and patches of scrub forest in remote and inaccessible places. There are also thickly-wooded areas where the vegetation has been protected against cutting and fire, as for example on Hong Kong Island and round villages. Villagers cut grass for fuel and this practice, combined with the prevalent hill fires of the dry season, has brought about the complete destruction of the vegetation in