INTER-CROPS 283 



margin of profit derived from the pine-apples has been dearly 

 procured at the expense of delaying the rubber. 



The principal inter-crops in favour are tea, coffee and cacao. 



Tea. The growing of tea between the rows of rubber trees 

 is almost unknown except in Ceylon and Southern India, where 

 it is a common practice. . Where rubber is only planted along 

 roadsides and drains there can be little objection to its presence. 

 In cases, however, where the tea is interplanted throughout the 

 rubber, the growth of the rubber is somewhat hindered by the 

 roots of the tea bushes occupying the ground. The rubber, 

 however, suffers somewhat little as compared with the tea, 

 which, when it becomes heavily overshadowed by the rubber, 

 suffers severely, and soon becomes unprofitable to cultivate. 

 As the cultivation of tea involves the installation of an expensive 

 factory and machinery, the two do not grow well together, unless 

 the rubber is very widely planted. 



Coffee. Coffee has for many years been a favourite inter- 

 crop with rubber. Indeed, as coffee was on the scene, especially 

 in Java and Sumatra, long before rubber came along, it is per- 

 haps hardly a correct description to call coffee an inter-crop. 

 In many cases the rubber was interplanted as a venture, in the 

 midst of going coffee plantations. 



Arabian coffee, Liberian coffee and Java coffee were, until 

 within the last few years, the varieties most cultivated. Within 

 recent years Robusta coffee has come to the front. When 

 cultivated on virgin soil this coffee gives astonishingly large 

 yields. As its name implies, it is a hardy plant and is not 

 subject to anything like the same amount of disease as, for 

 example, affects Java coffee. In addition, being more hardy, 

 it is not so much affected by adverse climatic conditions, and 

 one has not to fear crop failure, so common with Java coffee. 

 In Java this coffee is usually grown under the shade of lamtora, 

 in addition to the shade which it obt'ains from the rubber in 

 which it is interplanted, but in Sumatra it is grown without any 

 other shade than that supplied by the rubber. 



If it is proposed to plant, say, Robusta coffee as an inter- 

 crop, the rubber trees should be very widely planted, and in this 

 way the objection to inter-crops may be lessened. Later on, 

 if and when the coffee is cut out, the rubber trees would be 

 found to have secured the advantage of wide planting. The 



