Beverages

Coffee, Cocoa and Tea

Fiji Looks At

The Three

Beverages

From a Suva Correspondent i the reasonably near future should become self-support in coffee—in that its export cans will cancel out its im bill for the processed coffee. ie Acting Deputy Director of :ulture, Mr. G. B. Gregory, said in April, explaining that the de i in the Cole* y would not ant the establishing of a local sssing plant. ji’s best prospect, Mr. Gregory :s, is to build up a steady pro on and concentrate on the New and market. )ffee is in the news here, be -5 the Agriculture Department is I cautiously optimistic about the e industry following encourag eports from New Zealand coffee alists on samples sent for test ic samples came from a Fijian in Ra province, where there is zable area of semi-abandoned e plantations. Some of these rehabilitated by the Department agriculture some years ago and since been yielding a small itity of coffee for local sale, t first, it seems there are good pects for an export industry for it 50 tons a year, which would r orth about £lO,OOO. Fiji’s coffee >rt bill for 1958 was £24,500, for 1959, £30,567. iite a lot of land on the two i Fiji islands of Viti Levu and ja Levu is suitable for the produc of coffee, particularly the more y Robusta. Although Robusta not command as big a price as )ica it has a bigger yield per acre, can more than make up for the rence in price.

Rewa Interest ie interest of farmers in the Rewa , where cane farming has now discontinued, has been encourag- Rice is still their main crop they are learning to diversify. lot of these Indian farmers are ous to learn new methods, and proper planting one Indian in Rewa has obtained 280 cases of mas to the acre, which compares

with the average Fijian production of 70 cases to the acre).

However, Mr. Gregory thinks Fiji will know more about its coffee prospects when it tests a few cwts from the coffee now being harvested —a much better test of the export market than the samples previously sent, he says.

Meanwhile he is even more optimistic about the prospects for cocoa in Fiji. He feels the Colony is on to a “certainty” there.

Like coffee which can be grown as a windbreak round it, cocoa should flourish on quite large areas of both Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, as well as Taveuni, where Morris Hedstrom’s

are growing cocoa on a plantation scale.

Any -/ a u m^ r Ca ? gr ° W coffee, if he is a farmer. T y looking a^ter 18 t 0 tamed, says Mr. Gregory.

Fiji has about 1,000 acres of cocoa at the moment, compared with only about 50 acres of coffee.

The Colony exported five cwt. of cocoa, worth about £5O, at the end G f j ast yea r, but like coffee the amount should rise appreciably in the next few years as new plants come into bearing.

“We might get a couple of tons this year between the Agriculture De partment and Morris Hedstrom’s and

gressively more, and at £2OO a that is quite a cheering prospect,” ks Mr. Gregory.

A present the department pays a ranteed price for cocoa and coffee carrries out the fermenting and ng at various centres. Later on it 2s to be able to hand this pro ing over to the farmers, lould Fiji ever achieve something a production of 500 tons of •a, it would on present prices of )0 a ton, be worth £lOO,OOO to Colony. And the small farmer Id benefit proportionately, ccording to Mr. Gregory, a icr with ten acres growing, say ; acres of bananas, as well as e, cocoa and food crops should ible to net about £lO a week, veil as providing most of his ly’s food from his own land. £lO a Week fom his three acres of bananas lould net £250 a year, the coffee cocoa should be worth about to £3O a year per acre, and inning a couple of pigs and sell lis surplus food crops his farm d be able to bring him in that i,” Mr. Gregory thinks. . Gregory is not nearly so opti : about the prospects for tea as ; the other two beverages., comparison, the capital outlay is bigger, wages in Fiji would it difficult to compete with other ries, and as always, there is the -m of obtaining enough land, vould seem that Fiji, at least at ;tage, would do better to con ite on coffee and cocoa, h the world demand for cocoa, the prospect of New Zealand iming out with an instant-coffee of its own, these two have ;e prospects where tea would an imponderable.