Why Not Sisal

Hemp?

Could be Grown in New Guinea

IT is a remarkable fact that although general conditions in New Guinea are quite suitable for the production of sisal hemp, and although, under the Papua and New Guinea Bounties Act of 1937, a bounty of £6 a ton is payable to producers of sisal, and although the Agri cultural Department in New Guinea has good stock available for the establishment of crops in New Guinea, the planters of New Guinea seem to have no interest in this possible source of revenue. No doubt the planters of New Guinea know their own business best and there is some good reason why they do not touch sisal, but no one knows what that reason is.

One of the world’s chief producers of sisal hemp is Kenya Colony, in Equatorial Africa, and sisal hemp, to the amount of 80,000 tons in 1937, is the principal ex port from Tanganyika. The capital value of the sisal hemp industry in British East Africa is now calculated at £15,000,000.

There is a large and growing world mar ket for the material.