Grow Rice in New Guinea and Save

£50 A Ton

ALTHOUGH parts of Papua and New Guinea are suitable for growing cer tain types of rice, production has not yet reached much beyond the experi mental stage. The Administration is an xious to encourage the growing of this crop by natives, whose natural diet is not of very high nutritive value. It would also be to the advantage of planters and other employers of native labour to do so.

To learn more about rice production, Mr. F. Hurrell, of the Papua-New Guinea Department of Agriculture, recently spent some time on the Murray Irrigation Area, NSW, studying methods in that dis trict. In a radio interview at the end of March he told something of the problems that they are trying to solve in the Ter ritory.

He said that the idea of encouraging rice production was to get the natives to supplement their own food crops, kau kau, yam, taro, bananas, etc., and so attain a better diet, but its value as a cash crop was another reason why his Department was sponsoring its cultivation.

If the natives could be induced to grow rice extensively it should be a steady source of income to them as demand for rice far exceeded production. “At pre sent,” he said, “New Guinea buys Austra lian unpolished rice for £65 per ton. The grower on the MIA, I’ve found, receives £l5 a ton for his rice, while the native farmer in New Guinea has had to be paid up to £3O a ton to induce him to be interested.”

The native saw Australian rice being sold across P-NG counters for £65 per ton and he simply did not see why he should not be paid a high price, also.

Their agriculture was still primitive—the digging stick is still the main agricul tural implement, supplemented by the hoe, the axe and knife that the European had introduced. To produce a ton of rice, a large number of men had to co-operate and total payment for the rice had to be distributed among them. Therefore, al though the New Guinea natives were be lieved to be, per man, the largest land holders in the world, they were by no means millionaires.

OUTSTATIONS of the Department had produced considerable quantities of rice since the end of the war and there had been some native plantings.

The main rice growing centre is in the Mekio district, about 90 miles up the coast from Port Moresby. The Depart ment had 100 acres planted there and other plantings had been done by native co-operatives. The varieties of rice grown in New Guinea were upland types which do not need the submersion of the crop.

The rainfall is sufficient over the grow ing period to meet the crop’s requirements.

Rice grown by natives co-operatively is usually sold to the Department at the paddy stage and they do the hulling al though a number of small home-hulling machines have now been distributed to the natives.

Mr. Hurrell said that the ultimate aim was to make Papua-New Guinea self sufficient in rice production but that would take many years. The pioneering work had been done by the Department but “something further may be added to our efforts by private enterprise.” (Editorial Note: It is interesting to note that the MIA grower receives only £l5 for the rice that is sold in P-NG for £65

per ton—that is, £5O disappears in “charges” somewhere along the line. Be fore the war, rice from Indo-China and other parts of Asia was landed in New Guinea ports and sold at prices that were at least six times cheaper than the pre sent landed cost of Australian rice.)