Protection For Rice In

Rive Bowl Politics Protection For Rice In The Sugar Bowl

The Colonial Sugar Refining Co.’s rice project at Nausori will be protected, by way of increased duty on all rice imported into Fiji after January 1, 1966. The protection is for an initial penod of three years with a further three years, if necessary.

THE protection is dependent on undertakings between the Gov ernment and the company to secure a fair return to padi farmers for their crops, a fair return to the company for its investment and risk, and adequate safeguards to the public on the price.

It is planned that the CSR’s new rice growing scheme—carried out in an area which from 1880 up until now has been devoted to the production of sugar—will produce :,000 tons of padi rice a year, the estimated present gap between what is consumed in the Colony and what is grown.

It is expected that the new im port duty will add about ½d per lb to the price of imported rice.

Three Years' Grace In 1957, the CSR company an nounced that the Nausori mill, the oldest established sugar mill in the colony would close down at the end of the 1959 crushing season.

The company stated at that time that the Nausori mill had been operating unprofitably for a number of years, for various reasons, including inadequate quantities of cane; low sugar content of cane; and a price for cane which was too high in relation to its sugar content.

Investigations by the company did not show any way of making Nausori mill profitable.

The cane farmers, mainly Indian, were given three years’ notice of e CSR Co.’s intention to close the mill, and the company’s specially chosen re-settlement staff went into action to determine what could best grown on the Rewa to replace cane, and how best the difficulties such a change-over could be toothed out, In March, 1957, the CSR Co. in- ;ed Dr. Harry Evans, of Trinidad, world authority on sugar cane, :oa and other tropical crops, to inspect the Rewa canelands and make recommendations on their Mr. I. T. Twyford, a Fiji Government soil chemist, also made a soil

survey of the Rewa district, sur veying the land under cane and the land fringing the cane areas, a total of about 25,000 acres.

Using these reports as a basis, it has now been estimated that half the Rewa canelands will be suitable for bananas, cocoa, coffee and vege tables of various kinds; a quarter suitable for grazing, fodder crops and maize; and a quarter for rice.

The company has set aside £90,000 from its share of the Sugar Stabil isation Fund towards the rehabili tation of the Rewa. About £14,000 of this has already been allocated to meet half the cost of the drain age survey which the company undertook to do in conjunction with the Government. Bad drainage has been one factor in poor cane yields.

The CSR Co.’s design for a new look for the Rewa cane lands is, however, based mostly on rice, and when the Co. had proceeded a cer tain distance with this scheme it asked for certain assurances from the Government.

In bringing the matter before the Fiji Legislative Council on June 18, the Colonial Treasurer, Mr. E. R.

Bevington, said the Company’s pro posal involved a great deal of cap ital —just how much was confidential, but between £80,000 and £120,000 would be needed annually just to buy rice.

He considered that this was risk capital and the Council had already given protection to other industries which had invested risk capital. The CSR did not have to re-invest its money in Fiji—it was doing so be cause it had a sense of moral re sponsibility to the farmers, Mr.

Bevington added.

Some Don't Like

The New Look

However, it is one thing for the CSR Co. to act on the advice of its experts and decide to go in for large-scale rice production; and for the Government to give it its bless ing. But it is quite another to persuade Indian peasant farmers who have grown nothing but cane

all their lives to see the proposition in quite the same light.

With six months of the three years of grace given by the CSR in January, 1957. left to go, a great many of these farmers have made no move whatever towards a change over from cane. Most cane farmers are convinced that they can make more from sugar, with less work and less risk of loss through crop diseases, than they can from rice.

The position in the Rewa has been further complicated by a scheme by a group of Indians, led by Mr.

Vishnu Deo, MLA, who more than a year ago formed a Company with a nominal capital of £F1,000,000, to build a new independent sugar crushing mill at Nausori.

As reported in June PIM (page 21) the company seems to be having trouble raising the necessary capital, and in any event even if money now begins to flood in it is unlikely that the mill will be ready in time to step into the breach when the CSR Co. finishes.

Dearer Rice, They Say

When he was introducing the pro posal for increased duty on rice, Mr. Bevington said that even if a new sugar mill was established at Nausori, it would handle only about half the area now under cane. He then went on: “Those who are pro moting the new sugar mill are tak ing a very grave responsibility. . .

They are taking the life savings of many small farmers into their hands, and, if the venture fails, those life savings will be lost, and there will be grave discontent in the area.”

Mr. Kermode (elected European member for N-W Division), went further and said that the whole pro posal was “ridiculous”.

However, these two did not have it all their own way. The Indian members, led by Mr. Vishnu Deo (elected member for Southern) were all anti-protected rice, on the ground

that it would raise the price all round; and so also was the fourth Fijian member.

Fiji already produces about 15,000 tons of rice per annum. This is grown by farmers mostly for their own use and processed in small communal mills. At certain times of the year, sari-ed Indian women

floundering around, mud spattered,

wet to the waist, planting rice in handkerchief-sized padi-fields, be comes part of the Fiji scene Most of the 4,000 tons of rice that Fiji does not grow itself comes from Australia and it is estimated that the new import duty will raise the landed cost from £F70 to £F80 per ton.

At present Australian rice grow ers supply rice to Papua-New Guinea at £A61/10/- per ton, f.o.w. Sydney or Melbourne, for lots of five tons and over. Rice is supplied to all ther islands at £A70 per ton f.o.w.

It would be an interesting situa ion if the Australian millers, in an attempt to keep their Fiji market, reduced the price to Fiji to the P-NG level.

No Monopolies Wanted It has been very carefully stated V everyone concerned that it is not desired to create a rice monopoly in Fiji, although it has been proved quite conclusively, elsewhere, that small-scale rice production cannot compete on an economic basis with large-scale mechanised rice producion.

If anyone can establish large scale production in Fiji, it should • the CSR Co., and if it could raise at present target of 4,000 tons a ar, and ultimately get the price down, it would be a very good thing, indeed, for Fiji. Rice is the staple diet of the Colony’s 180,000 Indians, and to an increasing degree Fijians are eating it, too.

It is perhaps interesting, in this context, to remember what happened to Papua-New Guinea’s great rice plan. In the first years after the war, expert after expert hit the iil north, and all came back with the tale that the Territory could easily be self-supporting in rice.

Thus encouraged, natives and Euroins were urged to grow it, and hundreds did. But little by little the at rice scheme has petered out wrecked on the hard economic t that small-scale scratching e and there just cannot compete with the huge mechanised rice industry of Australia’s Murrumbidgee gation Area.

And, due to the same economic reasoning, the people behind the big Humpty-Doo rice project in Australia’s Northern Territory still think y will eventually be able to supply Asia with cheaper rice than i grows for itself. The Humpty Doo project has had a lot of troubles including wild geese which eat young rice.