INTRODUCTION XV 



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 50 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 for a time be made in the economic prosperity 

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



The agriculture conducted by Europeans in the tropics 

 is more efficient than that of the natives of the country. 

 This may be roughly illustrated by the case of Ceylon, where 

 the exports of " European " produce are to those of " native " 

 produce as 3 to 1, while the area cultivated by the former, and 

 the population supported by it, are only as 1 to 5, the popula- 

 tion being equally dense in either case, or denser on the 

 European estates. 



Before agriculture upon any but the very smallest scale or 

 basis can be carried on in a country, there must be in that 

 country satisfactory conditions as regards certain indispensable 

 preliminaries. 



Land must be available at a moderate cost. The price of 

 land will naturally vary with its advantages as regards nearness 

 to market, good or bad transport facilities, good or bad climate, 

 and many other things, but " moderate " in the sense used here 

 will of course take note of all these things. 



Roads or other means of transport must be in good order, 

 to bring material to the plantation and to take the produce 



