ENG-1963 — Page 54

32

REVIEW

and 1945. Today some 12,000 acres of Government afforestation, mainly co-extensive with water catchment areas, and 2,500 acres of traditional village plantation exist out of the 150,000 acres of hill lands suitable for this use. Pressure on agricultural land comes from two directions-the steady demand for urbanisation to meet an expanding, largely industrial, population and from the growing needs of the rural community itself. The urban expansion en- croaches directly upon arable land; although most of the new town schemes of post-war years have been carried out very largely by reclamation of shallow bays and estuaries, adjoining cultivated land has inevitably been over run. In recent years, however, this loss of arable land has been more than offset by the opening up of marginal land. Changes which have taken place over the last 8 years are indicated by the following table:

Approximate Area (Acres)

}

Land Use

(1955)

(1963)

2-crop fresh-water paddy land

20,192

15,336

1-crop upland rice land

248

101

1-crop brackish water paddy land

2,912

2,619

Vegetable land

2,255

7,822

Orchard land

952

1,564

Field crop land

3,480

4,271-

-Fish pond

495

1,144

Temporarily abandoned land

• +

•

:

2,715

2,033

33,249

34,890

It will be noted that while, paddy still accounts for over half of the arable land, market gardening has expanded more than three times in the last eight years, mainly at the expense of paddy. There is also a distinct trend in favour of the expansion of fish pond culture which makes profitable and concentrated use of poor quality land.

Mining in the Colony, mainly for iron ore, wolframite and kaolin has been and remains of relatively small importance. Prospecting and mining interests occupied only 1,140 acres of land in 1963, mainly in hill areas. During the Korean war, uncontrolled mining had an adverse effect on agriculture but since that time there has been a distinct decline in activity with consequently less distur- bance to other land uses.