Big Future For Rice

Growing

ACCORDING to Mr. A. Simo?is, a Sydney rice miller, who has been associated with the industry for 45 years, and is a member of the Rice Industry Committee and Rice Equa lisation Association, Ltd., there is a big future for rice-growing in Aus tralia.

Anything concerning Australian rice-growing is of interest to South west Pacific residents who, at the present time, are dependant on Aus tralian rice at a cost six times greater than they paid for Eastern rice before the war.

Practically the whole of Australian rice production of recent years has been exported to feed nearby rice eating peoples, but it is expected that later this year a certain amount will be released for home consumption, at about 7id. per pound.

In a Rotary Club address in June, Mr. Simons said : THE Australian rice industry does not fear competition from the Eastern countries with their cheap native labour, because Australian rice-fields produced two tons to the acre, compared with six cwt. in the East. Australia pro duced 72,000 tons of rice this year, but there was a generation of young Aus tralians who had never tasted it legiti mately.

“I say legitimately, because there is not a truckload of rice consigned in any direc tion which is not subject to pillage all along the line.” Mr. Simons said.

Supplies allotted to Asiatics or to people with doctor’s certificates are the other two sources by whch rice has been obtained since the war began.

But the reason why rice is still one of the items not available for general con sumption is that the whole of Australian production is still feeding rice-eating Eastern countries.

Rice was taken off the Australian mar ket in_the first place to feed the natives of New Caledonia, Papua, New Guinea and other island groups. These people ate up to 8 lb. per week and Australia supplied it to them.

“Papua receives 15,000 to 16,000 tons each year from Australia, and as yet has no alternative supply,” he said.

Normally Australians consume about 20,000 tons of rice—about 4 or 5 pounds per head annually.

Mr. Simons said he did not think rice could be over-produced in Australia.

There is a world deficiency of this food, which is the staple diet of half the people of the globe. Burma, Siam and China have not reached their pre-war produc tion. These couintries, with scorched earth policies, war and lack of political stability were millions of pounds behind their former output.

The rice market is also widening, with the rice-eating people of the world in creasing by five million per annum.

Australia has had inquiries from the Philippines and Saudi-Arabia, but has not got enough rice to cope with these orders.

He said that he did not think white people would ever develop the taste for rice held by the people of the East. In the United States, where rice is plenti ful, a company spent milions of dollars recently on a publicity campaign to in crease sales of rice—but nothing hap pened. They found that Americans, who can obtain 40 different kinds of rice from

their grocer, still regard it as ah occa sional dish and are unlikely to develop into a pound-a-day eaters.

MR. SIMONS said the Australian rice industry had “a tremendous future.”

Three hundred farms on the Murrum bidgee this year produced 72,000 tons, which netted £li million. There was scope for development in Queensland, the Nor thern Territory and the NSW Northern Rivers.

The industry began from a small bag of rice brought back from America by

an Australian, Mr. Jack Brady, which was cultivated on the Department of Agri culture’s experimental farm at Yanco.

It was obtained during a year in which there were no pests in the American rice

crop and for that reason the Australian variety is free from many of the pests which plague the crops in other parts of the world. There are 2,000 varieties of rice at Yanco.