ENG-1963 — Page 155

PRIMARY PRODUCTION

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The organization may one day be run by the fishermen them- selves as a co-operative enterprise, but lack of education is a problem that only time can solve. Wherever possible the fisheries extension division makes full use of the organization's close rela- tionship with the fishing communities. The success of the organiza- tion has attracted world-wide interest and many overseas visitors and students come to study its operations.

Vegetable Marketing Organization. The advantages of the fish marketing scheme were obvious almost immediately and a similar scheme was introduced in 1946 for the Colony's other important primary producers, the vegetable farmers. From this developed the Vegetable Marketing Organization. The organization operates under the Agricultural Products (Marketing) Ordinance, 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 develop- ment and encouragement of vegetable farming. It provides also for a Marketing Advisory Board on the same lines as the Fish Marketing Advisory Board. The controls imposed by the ordin- ance, however, apply only to the New Territories and Kowloon area, for there is little vegetable cultivation on Hong Kong Island.

The organization has established depots in the main vegetable cultivation areas of the New Territories. From these depots, the majority of which are now operated by vegetable marketing co- operative societies, vegetables are collected daily by the organiza- tion's transport fleet and vehicles hired for the purpose and taken to a large central wholesale market at Yau Ma Tei in Kowloon where three sales are held every day. The sales and all 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 has now started. Like the adjoining reprovisioned wholesale fish market, this will be financed jointly by the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund and the organization. The organization works in many ways like its fish marketing counterpart. There are important differences, however, in the method of sale, which in the case of vegetables is by negotia- tion and not by auction, and in the measure of practical assistance given by the vegetable marketing co-operative societies which now