Rice for the Islands

A New Australian Export

Seeking A Market

(From Our Own Correspondent.) Canberra, Oct. 5.

UP until a few years ago, Australia was a rice-importing country. Today we are growing all our own rice, and keeping about £250,000 a year in the country which we were previously sending out of it. In addition to that, we have rice for export.

For our own consumption we require a yearly crop of 20,000 tens. This year the crop promises to run to 30,000, and possibly 35,000 tons. Is there a market for the surplus? Yes—in the Pacific Islands.

The mandated territory of New Guinea alone, according to the last an nual report of the Administrator, im ports rice to the value of £90,000 a year, the largest quantity coming from Burma, viz., £44,000 worth; India com ing next (£25,000); then Java (£9,400); and China (£6,800). Thus there is a market right at our door.

The question is; Can we compete in price with the foreign article? It is said that we can.

The Murrumbidgee rice-growing in dustry has made extraordinary head way. In 1924-25 only 153 acres were under crop; to-day the acreage totals 20,000. Last year the major portion of the crop was sold at £11/10/- per ton, but the price this year has not been quite so favourable, though the extra quantity grown more than makes up for that.

Whilst the labor of Eastern countries is cheap, the up-to-date scientific methods of cultivation in Australia give us a great advantage. Efforts have been made to induce the natives of Java and other countries to give up their primitive and wasteful methods and adopt modern machinery, but they have failed, owing, it is said, to the fact that the various operations connected with rice-growing are bound up with religious rites.

Murrumbidgee growers are confident that rice-growing has come to stay.

Certainly the local market is assured to them, but they are expecting to work up a substantial export trade, and their confidence is shown by the fact that they have erected two large sheds, one at Murrami, and another at Leeton, for storage purposes.

One Murrami grower, Mr. R. M.

Cruickshank. working his header-har vester from 11 a.m. till 5 p.m., took off 221 bags in a crop going two tons to the acre. It would take a small army of Indian or Javanese coolies many days to equal Mr. Cruickshank’s six hour record, and so it is claimed that our farmers are well able to compete with Eastern countries.

No efforts have been made to culti vate rice in New Guinea, but in Papua they have proved a failure owing to unfavourable climatic conditions, and the land which was used for the pur pose has gone back to the coconut.

Active steps are now being taken to ex ploit the market in the Islands.

In the official report on the Man dated Territory of Western Samoa for 1929-30, it is specially noted that dur ing the March quarter, 1930, rice to the value of £1,306 was imported to Samoa from Australia.