ENG-1965 — Page 95

PRIMARY PRODUCTION

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Sweet potatoes are grown both for human consumption (the tubers), and for pigfeed (the vines). Some 1,900 acres of drier lands are doubled cropped, chiefly for tubers, and a catch crop of sweet potatoes is also grown on over 1,400 acres following the second paddy harvest. With an average yield of three tons an acre for each crop, and an average market price of $250 a ton, this represents an annual value of over $3.5 million. About 850 acres of other field crops, such as peanut, millet, soy bean and sugar-cane are cultivated mainly for local consumption. Fruit pro- duction, although not yet substantial, is expanding and includes wong pei, lung ngan, lemon, orange, tangerine, Japanese apricot, guava, papaya, lychees and pineapple. Accurate statistics are not available, but approximately 36,000 hundredweights of assorted fruits, valued at over $3 million, were harvested during the year. There is a small but useful export trade in some fruit and field crops to overseas Chinese.

Since 1954 the area of land under two-crop paddy has fallen from 20,190 acres to 12,050 acres. A further 2,240 acres are used for one-crop paddy in brackish water. With a milling average of 68 per cent, the estimated crop was 14,150 metric tons of polished rice; at an average wholesale price of $55 a picul the crop was valued at $12,862,000. 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 improved varieties, good irrigation and the use of fertilizers, production may reach 1.8 metric tons on average land, and over two metric tons on better soils. The first crop is sown into the nurseries in early March, transplanted in April and harvested in June and July. Second crop seedlings are nursed in June for planting out by the end of July and the crop is harvested during October and early November.

Farmers are making more use of varieties recommended by the Agriculture and Fisheries Department as resistant to 'blast', the disease of paddy caused by the fungus Piricularia Oryzae. The department also selects seeds within varieties and a limited amount of such improved seed is distributed to growers each year to be multiplied by them for further distribution. Traditionally the manurial treatment of rice consists of adding only very small dressings of dry animal manure, but the use of balanced artificial fertilizers is becoming increasingly important.