Fiji Competes

With Low- Wage

Countries

From a Suva Correspondent Hd you know that, according to latest available figures, Mexican m labourers were getting 4 - to a day? Did you know that on latest figures the labourer in ia earned about 2/-a day and t the tea-picker in Ceylon was ■ing just over 5/-?

JI Director of Agriculture, Mr.

J. Watson, knows these figures.

He knows them because these the countries with which Fiji Id have to compete in the ex ; market of any tropical crops i as coffee and cotton, r. Watson is quite aware of the that in any discussion of es, wages and conditions in Fiji, always Australia and New Zea -1 figures that are quoted, kit they are totally irrelevant our problems,” exclaimed Mr. son when I dropped in on him. 3 big question in Fiji is: How our farm labourers, with wages )/- to 12/- a day, going to com with these other tropical tries with dense populations on r wages?

Te may well find, even with a yield of cotton, that it would :heaper for us to buy cotton India!” ere are also different attitudes een Fiji farmers and those other tropical countries, says Watson. ther farmers are prepared to their own food, not buy it, the Fiji farmer, if he makes profit from any crop, whether ’, rice or anything else, spends food which he could grow him-

Fiji's Trouble

a a larger scale that is what ens to the whole Colony,” says Watson. “We earn large sums our sugar, copra and bananas, what happens? We spend half llion pounds on rice that we well be growing ourselves, id pulses—we spent £106,000 'ting them in 1959, yet they beautifully near Nadi, to men just one place. id sharps. Certainly, we could iroduce the wheat; but maize lx with it grows very well in Yet in 1959, sharps cost us 00, nearly three times the cost inning the Agricultural De lent for a year. And people ley don’t know what crops to a country of growing popula the first consideration must

be to feed ourselves and cut down this import bill.”

Mr. Watson said it was difficult to bring home this lesson to the farmer, because he had been utterly spoiled by the two easiest crops in the world, sugar and coconuts, and it was an uphill battle to persuade him to grow anything else that re quired real farming.

Too Much Sugar

The Colony’s preoccupation with sugar, even at a time of world over production, is indicated by the fact that the Suva Indian Chamber of Commerce at its March meeting even while deciding that an in crease in the duty on rice should be used to increase the production of rice in Fiji, passed a resolution ask ing that the sugar industry be as widely distributed as possible to give employment in all districts of Fiji, and that the Government should give help to re-establish the sugar industry in Rewa.

Labasa farmers at least have apparently woken up to the fact that if they grow their own rice,

they will not starve, whatever hap pens to the sugar industry. Every bit of spare land there not occupied by sugar seems to have turned to rice recently.

On the future of cotton growing in Fiji, which has aroused quite a lot of interest in the local Press lately, Mr. Watson is not really very optimistic.

He does not deny that Fiji cotton enjoyed a high reputation overseas during the American Civil War when prices were so high that even a very low yield was still very pro fitable.

Tracing its history in Fiji, Mr.

Watson said in 1875 cotton earned £22,406, by 1880 its income was £30,070, but by 1900 it had dwindled to £7O/13/9.

The reason, Mr. Watson said, waS that while the quality was un doubtedly good, the yield was ex tremely poor, so that as soon as America re-entered the market in force, prices fell.

About 1922-1923, said Mr. Watson, cotton ginneries were set up at Lautoka and Sigatoka, and an over

is cotton expert experimented th Sea Island cotton, only to find i yield was very low, and then issed the Sea Island cotton with w Guinea kidney cotton.

Low Cotton Yield Phis meant a poorer quality but did achieve a better yield. How r, the grower received only about an acre and just gravitated rards the more rewarding sugar, n 1958, Mr. Watson said, he him r planted four sample varieties had received from the director ;he Empire Cotton Growing Cor ation Research Station, in mda, as being thought suitable Fiji. [ planted them out on fertilised siga soils near Labasa, and I ,’t know why, but they did not’ d well at all,” said Mr. Watson, said he then consulted one of world’s most famous cotton eticists, Dr. Harland (now re el) who strongly advised him to worry about a quality cotton, to try for a short staple cotton, n Dr. Harland’s advice, Mr. ;son contacted the CSIRO in tralia, and was sent two Queens l varieties which he is now try out at Sigatoka. n hey look very well, but have flowered yet. I am also keeping ouch with other cotton-growing s in an effort to find out which ety, if any, is really suitable for ” he added. it present with the information lable to me, reports of yields, I could not recommend, that Government spend a lot of ey on cotton research. ►ne of the most significant ments against it to my mind, is fact that the Mr. Watson who a member of the Burns Corn ion, and who had himself been ctor of Agriculture in Uganda, ably the Empire’s biggest cotton ucer, never mentioned cotton is report on Fiji, can’t help feeling that with iis experience, he was alive to fact that this is not a cotton try—not at present anyway.”