PRIMARY PRODUCTION
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organization is self-supporting, the costs of the services provided being met from a 10 per cent commission charged on sales. Thirty per cent of this commission is refunded to the marketing co- operative societies in recognition of the marketing responsibilities they assume in respect of their own produce. The organization is non-profit-making and any financial surpluses are ploughed back into the industry in the form of improved services and other benefits. One example is the aid which the organization has given to farmers in overcoming their main problem of recent years- lack of a cheap fertilizer-through a scheme for the maturation and distribution of nightsoil at a low price.
Cheap credit is a further important service of the organization. Farmers may obtain loans, through the Commissioner for Co- operative Development and Fisheries, from the Vegetable Market- ing Organization Loan Fund. Since the establishment of this fund farmers have received 705 loans totalling $3,428,603. It is Government's declared policy that the organization should one day be run by the farmers themselves as a co-operative enterprise. As a move toward this end the salesmen of individual vegetable marketing co-operative societies have been authorized under the Agricultural Products (Marketing) Ordinance as market salesmen, and negotiations with the Federation of Vegetable Marketing Co- operative Societies were continued with a view to the Federation taking over that part of the sales floor occupied by its member societies.
CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES
A Registrar of Co-operative 'Societies was appointed in 1950, and the combined Co-operative and Marketing Department, now part of the Co-operative Development and Fisheries Department, came into being later in the same year. Since then, the co-operative movement has made rapid progress in Hong Kong and is being accepted by a growing number of people, particularly peasant farmers and fishermen, as a sound and democratic way of im- proving their lot. While the main effort was directed at first toward the physical formation of societies and toward ensuring that they were sound in organization and economy, existing societies and the general public are now more aware of what such unions afford, and the department is placing more emphasis on the moral and educational side of the movement. An important development