3 



The only factory not belonging to the Sugar Company is a small 

 one at Balyana. This belongs to a certain family of big land-owners 

 at Balyana who supply it with sugar cane of their cultivation. 



Reference to the table will show that the total average acreage 

 under cultivation is in the neighbourhood of 57,000 feddans producing 

 about 40,000,000 qantars of cane yearly. The average yield per feddan 

 is about 050 qantars, but that depends on the variety of cane grown, 

 and as our statistics of the average yield per feddan are compiled 

 irrespective of the variety and the percentage of first, second, and 

 third year growth, they are misleading for the purposes of the present 

 jiaper and have been omitted. 



The Sugar Company absorb more than two-thirds of the total 

 crop, although with the exception of a few thousand feddans at Nag 

 Haniadi they cultivate practically no land themselves. The cane is 

 bought from the cultivators under contract at a fixed price of P.T. 9^ 

 per qantar for 1921-1922 and P.T. 6 for the coming season of 1922- 

 1923. 



It is not so much the cultivation of sugar cane as the manufacture 

 of sugar from the cane that has received such a severe set-back from the 

 ravages of the Sugar Cane Mealy Bug Pseudococcus sacclutri CKLL. 

 indeed such a setback that the whole future of the industry hangs in 

 the balance. 



Pseudococcus saccftari CKLL. is a mealy-bug of world wide distribu- 

 tion and was known in Egypt as far back as 1912. It was not, however, 

 until the end of the war that it came into prominence, and from 1918 

 to the present time it has increased to such an extent that the whole 

 sugar cane crop of Egypt is infected to a greater or lesser degree. 

 Unfortunately by far the worst attack is at Nag Hamadi, the biggest 

 area under sugar cane cultivation. The other areas are already 

 bad, and they will become considerably worse if measures are not 

 taken to arrest the outbreak. Kom Ombo is probably the most 

 lightly attacked, but the cane there suffers from lack of land drainage 

 which gives rise to very irregular growth. 



The two main reasons for the outbreak are : 



(1) Bad cultivation during the war. 



(2) The introduction of the " 105 " Java cane. 



(1) Prior to 1914 the fuel used in the sugar factories was coal, 

 but during the war the price rose to such heights that its use became 

 economically unsound. Consequently it was replaced by trash, i.e. 

 the leaves and refuse from the fields. . This trash, which contains 

 millions of living insects, is conveyed loose either by trucks or other 

 means of transport from all parts of the sugar growing area to the 

 factories. Some of this is unavoidably dropped or blown off and the 



