Seek An Alternative To

Rice?

WAR conditions generally, and political conditions in the Far East, all of which have interfered with ship ping, threaten to bring about a rice famine in New Guinea.

New Guinea imports large quantities of rice from Saigon, Rangoon, etc., for the feeding of the tens of thousands of native labourers employed there. The price of rice, delivered in the New Guinea ports, has risen sharply in recent weeks This is very embarrassing—but it may prove to be a very good thing if it com pels the N.G. administration, and N G interests generally, to devise some other means of providing their thousands of native labourers with a staple food— either a cereal grown in New Guinea or something made from Australian flour. It often requires a “good” war, or a “good” fire, to clean up economic conditions which should never have been allowed to exist.