- 5.
15
markets provided in Hong Kong. In 1925 when all slaughtering in the abbattoirs stopped for many weeks and when the markets were entirely deserted there was no complaint from the Chinese who merely reverted to the customary haphazard conditions under which food is procurable in the large cities of their
own country.
15.
The usual reserve of livestock at the Animal Depots is only enough for about three days' normal slaughter, and it would be impracticable to hope to keep a three months' supply always in the Colony under present conditions. The Chinese population would therefore be without meat so soon as the small local stocks were consumed, assuming the blockade to be an effective one. This would be a hardship but not a great hardship, as there are many substitutes for fresh meat
such as dried fish, which would be available.
16.
Vegetables are a more important matter. Only about 20% of the vegetables consumed in the Colony is grown locally, and in this case as with livestock storage is impracticable. New Kowloon has almost given up rice cultivation for vegetables, being within carrying distance of the markets; and the same would presumably take place in the New Territories if the expenses of transit could be radically reduced. We suggest that the Superintendent of the Botanical; Department should estimate what acreage of land would have to be put under vegetables to raise the home grown percentage from 20 to about 50 which would probably suffice both as an experiment and as an emergency supply; and should advise us as the most suitable district for indirectly subsidising (by cheap or even free transport) this crop.
17. In the 1925 emergency the supplying of firewood for private use was one of the most difficult of the problems to
be