PRODUCTION
89
land to 4 times on thin hill soils. In places with access to towns, vegetables are often grown on a portion of the fallow, following the second rice crop. In other areas, after the second crop the land is spelled by adopting a form of land rotation for the area under catch-crops. The greater use of fallow land for catch-cropping depends on water supply and maintaining the soil's fertility by artificial means. Chemical fertilizers are used when they can be afforded, but on the whole reliance is placed on traditional fertilizers, such as nightsoil, bone meal, ashes, duck feathers, meal cakes and dried pulverized animal manure. Vegetable farmers (many of them immigrants who do not own paddy land) usually cultivate very small areas, seldom more than one acre, and depend entirely on fertilizers in order to make intensive use of their plots.
The absence of typhoons and frost, and a rainfall of 2226.3 mm., although rather unevenly distributed, made growing conditions for most crops more favourable than during the year 1954/55. Improved cultural methods, including a better understanding of balanced fertilizer application, as well as reduction of losses from insect pests by correct and system- atic application of insecticides, have increased production. The area under paddy during the season was estimated to be 23,352.79 acres from which 28,071 metric tons of paddy were produced, an increase of 2,071 metric tons over the amount produced in 1955.
204 acres were under water-chesnuts, a crop which is grown principally for export to the United States. This is a decrease of 5.5% over the previous year. The average yield is 30 piculs per dau chung (10.7 tons per acre) and the cash return $40-45 per picul (30¢ to 33.7¢ per lb.). The crop is grown under the same conditions as rice and supplants the second rice crop.
ANIMAL INDUSTRIES
Pigs and all kinds of poultry, including quail, are the
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