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vegetables or planted up fruit trees. It was perfectly easy to do so, 

 but it certainly required personal attention. The question of the 

 general food supply of the country is of great importance not only 

 to the Government but also to the planting community as large 

 employers of labour, which is dependent for its food on imported 

 supplies. Taking the staple food of the country, rice, approximately 

 three times as much is imported into the Federated Malay States 

 annually as is produced ; the figures are roughly 60 million gantangs 

 imported, against 20 millions produced. The Government is doing 

 a great deal to increase the food production by smallholders, 

 particularly by the bringing under irrigation schemes areas suitable 

 for the cultivation of padi. Experimental work now being carried 

 out by the Agricultural Department promises to lead to considerable 

 increases in yield from the areas at present under cultivation. These 

 efforts, however, could not be expected to produce immediate results 

 and at the present time the difficulty was to maintain the area under 

 padi at its present level ; the cultivation of rubber has made the 

 smallholder so prosperous, that he is not anxious to undertake the 

 more laborious and less profitable work of growing padi. Could 

 not more be done on and by estates to increase the production 

 of food-stuffs ? In all other countries, he had worked in, where 

 there was a resident labour force, on estates, the labourers 

 grew most of their own food-stuffs. In the West Indies, for 

 example, the negro labourer grows his own sweet potatoes and 

 yams, so that some fish and a little pork occasionally is all 

 he needs to buy. In this countiy there is practically nothing of the 

 sort done at all and the estate labourer is entirely dependent on 

 imported food. As Mr. Spring has pointed out, there are many 

 kinds of food that can be grown here and probably in course of time 

 will be grown. It is, however, not a healthy state of affairs that an 

 agricultural community should be content to go on depending on 

 imported food to such an extent. He was hoping to-day to raise 

 a discussion that would show whether something could not be done 

 to improve matters on estates as regards food production, what tlie 

 difficulties were and how they could be dealt with. It was 

 regrettable that the small attendance would rob the discussion of 

 much of its value. 



Mr. B. J. Eaton, Agricultural Chemist, said that the subject 

 was as interesting as it was important to them all. But in view of 

 the small attendance that morning he thought the question should 

 be raised whether some means could not be adopted by which a 

 greater interest could be aroused in the matter. He did not think 

 that, in view of the extent of the many estates they had, there would 

 be any very great difficulty in setting aside a small portion of land 

 on each estate for-growing at leas^a proportion of food required for 

 the labour force on the estate. It was the planter who should take 

 an interest in the matter, and it was through him that they could 

 hope to interest others. He was aware that managers of estates 



