Indians Plan More

CSR Pulls Out

Sugar For Rewa

WHAT happens to the Indian cane farmers in the Rewa after 1960 has not yet been decided, although there is a committee inquiring into the vexed problem.

The oldest existing sugar mill in sugar-dominated Fiji is at Nausori, in the pretty R.ewa Valley, not far along the coast from Suva.

Erected in 1880 by the Colonial Sugar Refining Co., the machinery in the ramshackle iron building will finally grind to a halt at the end of the 1960 cane crushing season, and the CSR’s interest in the Rewa cane industry will be at an end.

CSR’s decision to close its first mill was taken after long experience had shown that Nausori is too wet for successful cane growing.

All CSR’s other mills are operat ing in the “dry” areas of the Fiji group (which, oddly enough, have this year become a little too dry, due to drought, so that wet Nausori is this year producing better cane).

Farmers Leave It To Others There are thousands of acres under sugar along the Rewa, and although the CSR decision has been known for some time, the farmers themselves have done little or nothing in the way of finding alternative crops that will replace the cane—and give them an income—after 1960.

The average Indian cane farmer is a solid man of the land—a work horse—not a man of imagination.

He prefers to follow where others lead, to let others do his thinking for him.

But there are plenty of Indian thinkers, nevertheless, and some of these in the Rewa hold that the Rewa’s future might be in the dairying industry, or in specialised agricultural products—particularly black pepper and rice.

Rice is an important item of diet in Fiji, as in many Pacific terri tories, but most of it is imported.

The Rewa thinkers believe that the Rewa could be used to grow all of Fiji’s rice requirements one day.

But there is also a strong group which believes that sugar still has a future in the Rewa, despite CSR’s decision to pull out. The crop is already there, they say, and if a new, independent mill was established it could be made to work.

£1 Million Company

In July, a group of R-ewa farmers, speaking through the senior Indian member of the Fiji Legislative Council, Mr. Vishnu Deo, brought

all these ideas together in an announcement that they were planning to launch a £l-million company in the Rewa.

The new company, said Mr. Deo, would probably be called the Fiji Sugar Milling Co. Ltd., and would have its capital divided into 40,000 shares of £25 each.

The company planned to erect its own sugar mill, and already was negotiating for a suitable site, and inquiring abroad for machinery.

One West German firm had offered a mill able to crush 100 tons of cane a day, to produce 12 tons of sugar.

Technical officers would have to be got from overseas, said Mr. Deo, who added that the company would also go in for rice, black pepper, possibly bananas, dairy farming and vegetables.

The farmers’ scheme is a big one, with plenty of thorny problems to it. Many people are saying that it is too big a task to handle, and that the Rewa farmers won’t really be able to carry on from where the CSR leaves off.

But a lot more are hoping that the proposed company can make a go of it—not the least of them the Indian farmers along the Rewa.