Rubber-Growers Are

Relieved.

Tobacco Prospects In Papua.

From Our Own Correspondent.

Pt. Moresby, Sept. 27.

THE price of rubber continues to rise —as do the spirits of the rubber planters in Papua. One can hardly recognise them as the harassed beings of early March.

Already they are congratulating themselves heartily upon their past wisdom and foresight in planting rubber and not coconuts!

Coconuts, they tell you wisely, never had a hope from the beginning.

The price of copra shows a dismal figure. There seems no possibility of the industry paying its way; no relief for the planters, unless the Government takes a hand, or some enterprising scientist discovers a method of con verting copra into, say, synthetic rubber.

We hear so much of rubber and copra that people can be forgiven for think ing that they are the only products of Papua.

But coffee has been grown success fully in the hills behind Port Moresby for some time, as well as in the Northern Division of Papua—a Robusta variety of excellent quality.

Three desiccated coconut factories have been carrying on steadily for several years in the Eastern as well as in the Central Division—two not far from Samarai and another in the Hisiu district, west of Port Moresby.

Since April, 1933, 933 bags of coffee of 70 lbs. weight and 4,947 cases of desiccated coconut have been shipped from Port Moresby.

News that Java coffee is being dumped into Australia at a very low price is disturbing our industry. Java coffee, up to August 18th, was being sold in Sydney at £36 a ton; in January it was £47, and in November, 1932, Robusta imported from Java on firm conversion of exchange c.i.f. Sydney was £59. To-day it is reported to be as low as £26. Robusta coffee from Papua has been fetching 10½d. per lb. in Melbourne.

New areas have recently been acquired in the Logeri district for coffee planting, for coffee has been offering opportunities to investors in the territory.

Papua and New Guinea coffee enter Australia free of duty and exchange.

There has been a revival of the old time trade in sandalwood on the Cen toral Division of the Territory, inland from the coast. The price offered is good, and even though sandalwood is hard to find to-day it appears to be worth the trouble of finding.

Experiments in tobacco planting con tinue. The Government is interested and helpful. Tobacco growing is not new to Papua; a great deal of time, money and effort was invested in the industry in the past, and 22 years ago there were areas under cultivation.

One reads in the annual reports for 1911 and 1912 that the cultivation of tobacco had commenced on a commer cial scale, and that a company (British New Guinea Development Co.) had planted about 20 acres on the Laloki

River and harvested 14 to 15 tons of good-looking cigar tobacco. By 1912 some very marketable cigars and tobacco had been made in their factory in Port Moresby. The enterprise failed owing to “inexpert selection of soil in which to grow crops.”

Mr. Ramsay Grimshaw, brother of Miss Beatrice Grimshaw, the famous novelist of the South Seas, is busily engaged in the production of tobacco on his plantation on the Laloki, 15 miles outside Port Moresby, as is also Mr.

Tom Sefton, for Koitaki Rubber Estates, further inland, in the hills, be yond Roua.

Expert advice has been sought from Queensland, so there is every prospect that tobacco will yet take a definite place among the products of Papua.