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Page 136.
Page 136 60. Land-clearing had been in progress for nearly a year and plans had been based on setting up 10 Units of 30,000 acres each. The following table shows the progress which had been made in land-clearing.
Land-Clearing at March 31, 1948
Bush flattened Windrowed
Rooted
Unit I 13,746 acres
Unit 2
Unit 3
Nil
Nil:
Nil
Nil
Nil
Nil
10,442 4,503
61. Of the area in Unit 1 which had been completely cleared, 3,400 acres had been planted with groundnuts. Planting begins with the early rains which, at Kongwa, usually start early in December. Crops normally ripen for harvest in an average of 113 days. In addition 4,100 acres of Mbuga land (open grassland with a little scattered scrub) in Unit 2 which required practically no clearing had been planted with groundnuts. There were 289 heavy tractors in the Region, of which only 81 were fit for service for land-clearing, instructional purposes, road making and all the other jobs for which they were needed.
The 1947-48 Harvest
62. The first crop was ready for harvesting in May, 1948. Rainfall had been adequate but cultivation had been inadequate because of insufficient time being available in which to bring newly cleared land into level agri- cultural condition. This led to poor stands of plants, due to uneven depths of planting, and to difficulty in carrying out proper cultivations.
63. Harvesting began in the middle of May and was finished in August. The groundnuts are first dug out of the ground by a digger. Some difficulties were encountered. The soil, baked by the sun, had become compact and solid, with the result that there was a tendency for the blades of the digger to fail to penetrate the ground to the required depth and so bring all the nuts to the surface. Secondly, the abrasiveness of the red soils caused excessive wear of the digger blades. (The large size Valencia nut, which has a tendency to separate from the vine, was difficult to dig, for it
was found that the majority of the nuts remained in the ground and could only be harvested by hand gleaning. For this reason it has been decided not to grow this variety in future in Kongwa.)
64. After digging, side delivery rakes are used to rake the plants (with the nuts attached to them) into rows. Little trouble was experienced with the machine but the uneven ground and shallow trenches left by the diggers made it difficult to ensure collection of all the plants. Where raking was ineffective the crop was windrowed by hand.
65. Combine harvesters were then used to pick up the plants, and to separ ate the nuts from the vines and bag them. This operation was successful.
66. The yield from the 1947-48 crop was as follows (in lbs.):—
Natal Common Spanish Bunch
Unit 1 Unit 2
....
...
Valencia 473,206 613,938
686,743 533,698
694,560
506,697
1,087,144
1,220,441
1,201,257
67. Averages per acre worked out thus:---
Valencia
lbs. per acre
Natal Common Spanish Bunch lbs. per acre lbs. per acre
Unit 1
593
604
557
Unit 2
436
564
457
14