ENG-1949 — Page 70

sow; stock is being imported from Australia. The farmers are most anxious to obtain breeding from this pig station. and there is a large waiting list for stock produced. There is also a poultry station at Sheung Shui where various breeds are being tried out, and where day-old chicks and hatchings of eggs are being distributed to farmers, but the main activities of the Poultry Section are being concentrated at present on the control of disease.

In order to establish closer contact with the farmers and obtain their co-operation, extension stations will be formed throughout the New Territories where an Agricultural Officer will live amongst the farming community, demon- strate methods of vegetable culture and strains of rice and will sell Chinese vegetable seed and insecticides. Stud boars, poultry and selected bulls will also be kept at these stations.

Wholesale Vegetable Market

Before the War about four-fifths of the vegetables consumed in the Colony were imported. In order to increase the vegetable production of the Colony, both in quality and in quantity, and to facilitate the collection, marketing and sale of vegetables, the Wholesale Vegetable Marketing Organisation was established in

in September 1946. All vegetables produced in the New Territories and imported into Kowloon from China have now to pass through the Market where they are sold by public auction. The Organisa- tion has had to grow and expand against strong opposition, in the first place from the farmers who did not appreciate the benefits which it could bring them and secondly from the middlemen who lost the substantial profits which had previously been their lot. The farmers have now come to realize that the scheme has brought them advantages which have more than compensated for any inconvenience which the change may have brought them, but the displaced middlemen remain disgruntled.

During the year the Organisation has doubled the size of its Kowloon market and has opened a small market in Hong Kong. A fleet of sixteen new diesel trucks has been acquired through a Colonial Development and Welfare grant.

Plans are in hand for the de-centralization of the existing Organisation and under the new plan the farmers will take a more active part in operating the scheme and will eventually form a co-operative.

Production of vegetables, which before the war was sufficient only to meet one fifth of the Colony's needs, has increased to such an extent that the requirements of five- eights of the existing much greater population can now be met. Details of the amount of vegetables sold in the market during 1947 to 1949 are as follows:

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