ENG-1963 — Page 141

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PRIMARY PRODUCTION

vegetables are harvested annually from intensively cultivated land. The main crops are white cabbage, flowering cabbage, turnip, leaf mustard, Chinese kale, Chinese lettuce, tomato, water spinach, string bean, watercress, cucumber and Chinese gourd. Cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce and tomato are produced in great quantity during the cooler months and quality is excellent. This intensive produc- tion of vegetables takes place on both fertile and comparatively infertile land and is made possible by heavy dressings of manure. Nightsoil is used on about half of the area, but is being replaced or supplemented by pig and poultry manure, peanut cake, duck feathers, bone meal and compost. The use of artificial fertilizers is increasing, usually in addition to organic manures. The wide- spread use of insecticides is an important feature of farming, as is the increasing use of selected crop varieties.

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Sweet potatoes are grown both for human consumption (the tubers), and for pigfeed (the vines). Some 2,500 acres are double cropped on drier lands, chiefly for tubers; and a catch crop of sweet potatoes is also grown on 4,000 acres following the second paddy harvest. With an average yield of three tons an acre for each crop, and an average market price of $298 a ton, this repre- sents an annual value of $8 million. About 1,771 acres of other field crops, such as peanut, millet, soybean and sugar-cane, are cultivated mainly for local rural consumption. Fruit production, although not yet substantial, is expanding and includes wampei (wong pei), lung ngan, lemon, orange, tangerine, Japanese apricot, guava, papaya, lychee and pineapple. Accurate statistics are not available, but approximately 43,938 cwts of assorted fruits, valued at over $3 million, were harvested during the year.

Since 1954 the area of land under two-crop paddy has fallen from 20,191 to 15,336 acres, the balance being used for permanent vegetable and field crop production. A total of 2,619 acres are used for one-crop paddy in brackish water and 101 acres for one- crop upland paddy. Due to drought there was a fall in paddy production in 1963 and, with a milling average of 68 per cent, the estimated crop was 9,162 metric tons of polished rice; at an average wholesale price of $60 a picul the crop was valued at $8,470,000. In a normal year the average yield of paddy from an acre of two-crop land is about 1.2 metric tons, but with seed of approved varieties, good irrigation and the use of fertilizers,