Don’t Let it Happen Here!

Nuttery Suggested for Pacific

WITH a London dateline, this incredible news item was recently published in a Sydney newspaper: A plan for switching ground-nut pro duction from Africa to the British islands in the Pacific is under consideration by colonial experts. With an increasing em phasis on industrial development in Africa, the manpower hitherto used in ground-nuts schemes may have to be diverted to industry.

On the other hand, the Pacific islands are suffering from the effects of their dependence on a one-crop “coconut economy.” The introduction of ground nuts as a secondary crop could bring prosperity to these areas. A start in this direction is being made by Tonga, whose Crown Prince has paid a visit to Aus tralia to study ground-nuts production.

FEW residents of the South Pacific would agree that the Islands were precisely suffering for their coconut economy at the present moment; or that there was a surplus of labour anywhere to start any grandiose Ground-nut Scheme anywhere here. Prince Tungi’s experi ment in peanut-growing is based on the peculiar circumstances of Tonga.

There is, in that Group, a limited area of arable land; the Tongan population is increasing rapidly; each Tongan male is entitled to 81 acres of land when he is 16; and investigations have shown that although coconuts will return only £3O per annum per acre, peanuts, which have a ready market in NZ, will return about £4OO.

The British Socialist Government’s African Ground-nut Scheme which was to remedy all of Britain’s vegetable oil troubles, cost tens of millions of taxpayers’ money and produced virtually nothing.

The Scheme seems now to be in the final process of folding up.

There are few. if any, areas in the Pacific Islands suitable for the cultivation of peanuts on the gigantic scale that was planned in Africa. Nor are there sufficient natives who have become poverty stricken through coconut-growing to supply labour for such a project.

All Colonial experts please note.