ENG-1964 — Page 80

PRIMARY PRODUCTION

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Colony in July 1899 agricultural land was surveyed and in 1900 land courts were set up to hear the inhabitants' claims to tenure of their land. In 1905 the titles of 354,277 lots, comprising about 40,738 acres of agricultural land were confirmed by Government. Because they were too small and scattered to be given individual titles, these lots were recorded in Block Crown Leases for each of the 566 Demarcation Districts in the New Territories, and are known as Old Schedule Lots.

Crown rents, replacing the old Chinese Imperial land tax, were fixed at the time of the lease and later confirmed by proclamation. They have progressively declined in value so that in some cases they are now scarcely worth the trouble of collecting.

On 4th March 1904, all land not claimed at the time of the lease was proclaimed to be Crown land, leases of which could be sold at public auction in line with the procedure in Hong Kong and Kowloon. It has always been recognized, however, that most villages have certain prescriptive rights over the land around them where they graze their cattle, cut grass, and bury their dead and in the more rural parts of the New Territories Crown land is not put up for auction until the nearest villages have been given the opportunity to object. New Territories lands acquired by auction are known as new Grant Lots.

The pattern in 1905, which largely continued until the expansion of the New Territories population in the nineteen fifties, was of small owners holding about an acre and cultivating their own land. In certain areas, however, such as Yuen Long, much of the best agricultural land was and is still owned by clans established for hundreds of years. By tradition a proportion of the rent raised from clan land is set aside by the clans themselves for the upkeep of ancestral halls, religious observances, clan welfare and the maintenance of schools. Such land may not be disposed of without the consent of the clan members (sometimes numbering many hundreds) and the permission of the District Officer.

With the population increase however a marked change has occurred. According to the 1961 census, only just over 50 per cent of the New Territories farmers now farm their own or clan land. These owner cultivators, the majority still growing rice, are con- centrated in the Hakka areas on the eastern side of the New Terri- tories, particularly the Sai Kung and Sha Tau Kok peninsulas.