New Guinea Natives’ Significant Contribution to
pp. 60-61 · Read in the full issue
Territory 's Rice Production Madang-Sepik Villages Double Output This Year
RICE imports Into the Territory of New Guinea (excluding Papua) amount to about 7,300 tons per annum; local native pro duction from the rice growing villages of Madang and Sepik dis tricts is expected to be 815 tons this year.
This shows, of course, that NG has still a long way to go before it is self-supporting in rice; but it does not alter the fact that, in the last few years they have made giant strides—in 1951, for example, these same natives produced less than 10 tons of milled rice. In 1953. they produced 450 tons.
Rice is also grown in Papua; par ticularly in the Mekeo region which has -been the pet native rice-grow ing (project of the Department of Agriculture. But the production figures given here (from a recent statement by the Minister for Territories) refer only to the village rice industry in this northern part of the NG mainland where rice growing has been encouraged as part of rural extension work amongst these natives who have taken to this form of agriculture enthusiastically.
A target of over 4,000 tons annu ally, from these villages, has been
ing to the official view, should be judged primarily as a means of ad vancing native welfare: Large-scale mechanised rice-production on the lines indicated by rice experts who have visited the Territory, should, the Minister says, he considered as a se P ara te question altogether, Some Europeans are already
growing rice up the Markham Valley and others are growing it lor food crops on plantations. If more suitable land were made available, no doubt other settlers would be eager to enter the in dustry.
The total annual requirements of PNG are about 11,000 tons —virtually all of it used for rations for native labour. If the contribution of the native villages of the Madang and Sepik Districts can, in a few years, supply over 4,000 tons of this, it is by no means impossible that before another decade has passed, PNG will be an exporter of rice rather than an importer.
With the price still around £9O per ton, it is an industry worth fostering. Although here again, apart from native enterprise, we come back to those three obstacles to all PNG progress—availability of land, labour and finance.
If Mr. A. Golding, a New Zealand Government Inspector of Schools, is visiting Government schools throughout Viti Levu, and will later continue on to Samoa and the Cook Islands.