XVI INTRODUCTION 



TRINIDAD, 19056. 



Cacao or cocoa ... 1,041,000 



Sugar 451,000 



BRITISH GUIANA, 1904 5. 



Sugar 1,280,000 



Rum 62,000 gals. 



BRAZIL, 1904. 



Coffee 19,957,000 



Cotton 826,000 



Mate 954,000 



Kubber 1 11,200,000 



Tobacco 838,000 



When we look over this and similar lists, and realise that 

 the tropics supply us with all our cinchona bark (for quinine), 

 cinnamon, coconuts, coconut oil, copra, coir, coffee, gutta-percha, 

 jute, palm-oil, rice (with the exception of a little in the 

 Southern United States), rubber, sago, spices, sugar (except 

 the beet sugar of the continent), tea, tapioca, and many other 

 things, the vast importance of agriculture in the tropics, and of 

 its proper conservation, improvement and extension, will be 

 understood. The area occupied by the cultivation of the 

 export products is perhaps 25 million acres and that spent 

 in maintaining the actual people of the tropics is perhaps 

 about another 275 millions. Even at this rate not more than 

 half the available land is used, and not only so, but much of 

 it is very inefficiently used, while intensive agriculture, as 

 practised in Europe or America, is almost unknown, except 

 among European planters. Could the yield of cereals in India, 

 for example, be increased by a mere bushel an acre, a vast 

 difference would be made in the economic prosperity of that 

 country. This, however, is more easily said than done. 



1 This is not the product of agriculture, but of collecting in the forests. 

 With the growth of the rubber planting industry of Southern Asia, and the 

 great competition that must ensue, the rubber exports of Brazil will probably 

 decline in value, though perhaps not in quantity. 



