OCCUPATIONS, WAGES AND LABOUR ORGANIZATION
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Gradual progress is now being made, with Government assistance and encouragement, in repairing these several decades of neglect, and agriculture, which had formerly been sinking into a subsidiary to other more exciting and profitable jobs, is gradually regaining its proper importance.
The main crop is rice, grown in all the valleys and, wherever possible, on irrigated hill terraces. New Territories rice includes some varieties of a very high standard, and it is the general practice of villagers to take their own rice to town and barter it for a larger quantity of cheap imported rice, of lower quality, for their own use. Where sufficient water is available, the fields are made to produce two rice crops a year, but in salty land, and where no water can be stored in winter, only one crop (the second) can be grown. The principal winter crop is sweet potatoes, but wherever there is quick transport to town and a sufficient supply of fertilizer, there is an increasing tendency for green vege- tables to be grown. These include most of the best-known European summer vegetables, the season for which in Hong Kong is the winter.
A recent development has been the planting of certain hilly areas with ginger, financed by Hong Kong food pre- serving firms who wish to reduce their dependence on supplies from mainland China. Some fair crops have been harvested and the quality is improving with experience.
Pig-breeding is an important source of livelihood in most villages, and, particularly in hilly areas, there are good herds of the local humped cattle, for beef and draught, but not for milk. Cut grass also has commercial value, principally for breaming (applying fire to ships' hulls to cleanse them from slime, weeds, etc., a process which, in the case of fishing junks, is undertaken about ten times a year), and in villages which are within easy range of fishing-towns grass is col- lected, chiefly by women, and transported to town on foot or in small family-owned boats. Almost all coastal villages
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