British Expert Looks Them
p. 26 · Read in the full issue
Planting Possibilities
P-Ng
British Expert Looks Them Over
From Our Own Correspondent
P. Moresby, Aug. 1.
THE plantation agency firm of Francis Peek and Company (headquarters in London) is showing an interest in Papua-New
Guinea possibilities, and has had I: Mr. J. Lincoln, its plantation super visor in Indonesia make a pre- liminary survey.
He went to the Central Highlands 8 and visited the Administration’s a high-level experimental agricultural! stations, had a shrewd look around t Madang and the Golgol Valley, then r, Rabaul, and finally rubber plan- tations in Papua.
He agreed that there were good£ possibilities for plantation develop ment in the Territory but that thee Islands generally were not nearly soo rich agriculturally as Indonesia.
There were, he said, very good!: areas which could be developed, buti a lot of the country was too rough r. and inaccessible.
Mr. Lincoln was favourably im pressed by the Central Highlands a but expressed the view that a roadb to the coast was essential before itJ would be economic to estab lish plantations for such crops ass tea, cinchona and coffee.
Since the experts say that it wouldb cost about three-quarters of ajs million pounds to get a road built, itJ. seems that the Highlands will beo reserved for the energies of a futurea generation of Territory residents.
Mr. Lincoln naturally said veryy little about his estimate of thee Territory’s potentialities, his comments for a report to hisaj firm’s London office. But what hea did say about present day conditionsai in Indonesia and the problems fac ing European plantations there,. 9 indicated that their owners might j. well be looking for less fields to which they could transfen their activities.