ENG-1961 — Page 139

PRIMARY PRODUCTION

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scheme was introduced in 1946 for the Colony's other most impor- tant group of primary producers, the vegetable farmers. From this developed the Vegetable Marketing Organization. The Organization now operates under the Agricultural Products (Marketing) Ordin- ance, 1952, which provides for the appointment of a Director of Marketing (the Commissioner for Co-operative Development and Fisheries) who is made a corporation sole with power to acquire and dispose of property and use the assets of the Organization for the development and encouragement of vegetable farming. It pro- vides also for a Marketing Advisory Board; the Director is Chair- man and there are four other persons, nominated by the Governor, who have experience and understanding of the difficulties and needs of farmers. The controls imposed by the Ordinance, however, apply only to the New Territories and Kowloon area, for there is little vegetable cultivation on Hong Kong Island.

The Organization has established depôts in the main vegetable cultivation areas of the New Territories. From these depôts, the majority of which are now operated by Vegetable Marketing Co- operative Societies, vegetables are collected daily by the Organiza- tion's fleet of transport and taken to a large central wholesale market at Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon. Three sales periods are held at the wholesale market every day; these sales and all the money dealings involved are conducted by the Organization. Reprovision- ing of the Kowloon Wholesale Vegetable Market on a larger, reclaimed site in Cheung Sha Wan is being planned.

The Organization operates in many ways like its Fish Marketing counterpart. Important differences, however, lie in the method of sale which, in the case of vegetables, is by negotiation and not by auction, and in the measure of practical assistance given by the Vegetable Marketing Co-operative Societies, which now handle over 70% of the local production of vegetables. The reasons for negotiating sales, instead of holding auctions, are

auctions, are easy to appreciate; on a normal day some 20,000 separate lots may be sold to nearly 3,000 buyers. The number of lots rises to nearly 30,000 a day in the main season, making sales by auction impracticable.

Production during the year was satisfactory and sales of vegetables through the Organization were higher than previously recorded. There was a slight increase in the average annual