TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN TROPICAL AGRICULTURE 5! 



Arrangements were therefore made to start a station at 

 Aburi in 1890 with one European curator and one native 

 clerk, and the expansion is so great that to-day there are 

 eleven European officers and twenty-seven native officers, 

 clerks, and learners, with a cocoa industry, the output 

 of which in 1913 reached 113,239,980 lb., valued at 

 2,489,218. There are five large stations and two small, 

 or sub-stations, yet such is the growth of the cocoa 

 industry alone that it is most difficult to cope with it 

 adequately; consequently, sanitary conditions on many 

 farms are disappointing and may lead to much future 

 trouble, though it may appear that farmers are depending 

 too much upon cocoa; yet Para rubber is being exten- 

 sively planted, and coconuts may claim attention in the 

 near future. 



Owing to the difficulty experienced in keeping pace 

 with the cocoa industry, the staff has as yet not been 

 sufficiently large to enable original research work to be 

 carried out, but with the erection of an entomological 

 laboratory and provision for the appointment of a 

 mycologist, it is hoped results may be forthcoming in 

 the near future. 



The cocoa industry owes its present position largely 

 to the demonstration plots at the older stations, but it is 

 aided to a large extent by European and native travelling 

 instructors. Unfortunately, there are a number of 

 difficulties in the way of obtaining the best results from 

 such instruction, the chief of which being: (i) Lack of 

 sufficient officers; (2) the difficulty of travelling; (3) 

 inability to punish owners of neglected and dangerous 

 farms; (4) shortage of labour to work farms, due to the 

 lack of means of transport save by head loads. This 

 instructional work has been assisted by the distribution 

 of simply written pamphlets in English and the vernacular 

 on the cultivation and preparation of the more important 

 economic crops. One special feature should be men- 

 tioned, viz., that demonstrations in pruning, cleaning, 

 preparation of land and crops are given on the farms, at 

 which the chiefs and their followers are expected to 

 attend. The sad part of this work is the impossibility of 

 closely following it up, and it is heavily discounted, as 



