44 THE COCONUT BELT 



Chinese and Indian merchants and moneylenders 

 to secure control of the wealth-producing coconut 

 and its products. 



PAPUA 



Papua, or British New Guinea, has very promising 

 prospects as a coconut-growing country with its 

 68,000,000 acres of land, of which only about 

 350,000 acres have been taken up under lease on 

 easy terms, the Government declining to sell any 

 land outright. The natives of the British section 

 of the island own some 35,000,000 trees, planted 

 on 350,000 acres of land, at 100 to the acre. With 

 regard to the prospects, an official of the New 

 South Wales Agricultural Department reports as 

 follows : " Altogether, it costs about 6,450 to 

 bring an estate of 500 acres up to the sixth year, 

 or 13 per acre. In the seventh year the trees 

 should give 40 nuts each, or 100 tons of copra. In 

 the ninth year this should increase to 60 nuts. For 

 catchcrops, the planter has the choice of robusta 

 coffee, pepper, ramie, vanilla, ground nuts, tapioca, 

 etc. The trees are said to start yielding at five 

 years, and they bear heavily at eight or nine 

 years. Healthy trees will live at least sixty years." 

 Not long ago The World's Work gave a capital 

 account of the coconut industry in Papua, of which 

 the following is an extract : 



" The coconut palm produces from 100 to 120 

 nuts per year ; 6,000 nuts make one ton of copra. 



