112 PRODUCTION 



TROPICAL HIGHLANDS SUMMARY. 



The characteristic feature of practically all tropical highlands 

 is their need for development. Since the time of the introduction 

 of transport under refrigeration, it is only in the last few years 

 that a shortage in the world's supplies of animal foodstuffs has 

 begun to be felt. Till recently there was an abundance of land 

 available for production, and the tropical highlands, owing to the 

 peculiar initial difficulties, have thus been more or less neglected. 

 It is possible, however, that when once the best of these are made 

 productive and are brought, through proper means of transport, 

 within effective reach of the world's markets, they will be found 

 rich in pastoral resources. Owing to the mountainous nature of 

 these tropical highlands, they will always be more adapted to 

 pastoral industries than to crop cultivation, so that the latter will 

 not interfere much with the former, as it tends to do in rich prairie 

 regions. 



At the present time and for the immediate future the greatest 

 possibilities for development in the tropical highlands lie in the 

 direction, first, of cattle-rearing, and next of sheep- rearing, the 

 characteristic heavy seasonal rainfall being more favourable to 

 the former. However, the total number of meat-producing cattle 

 in all these regions, taken together, cannot at present be more than 

 40 millions * of average low-grade quality, and about one half are 

 in Brazil where local consumption makes at present heavy demands 

 upon the available product. 



Owing to the fact that these tropical highland cattle are mostly 

 inferior stock, and are left very much to " shift for themselves," it 

 is probable that their average meat-producing capacit}' is not more 

 than half that of high-grade Western European stock. Hence the 

 total exports of live animals, beef and meat products from tropical 

 highlands is small, even though the population is generally sparse. 

 A greater density of agricultural population in these regions up to 

 a certain limit would lead to an increase in the quantity and the 

 quality of the exportable surplus. Sheep-rearing has so far received 

 little attention in most of these undeveloped highlands, so that 

 neither wool nor mutton has been exported from them. The 

 value of these tropical highland areas from the point of view of 

 this enquiry lies much more in their potential rather than in their 

 actual production of meat and meat products. Something has 

 already. been done, as above noticed, towards building up large- 

 scale meat-exporting industries in Rhodesia, Madagascar, Brazil 

 and Venezuela, but these industries are as yet only in their 

 initial stages. These regions all require the fertilising agency of 

 capital in order to make their latent pastoral resources contribute 

 an important share of meat to the world's supplies. To what 



1 Distributed as follows: Biazil (tropical) upwaids of 20 mill., Columbia 

 and Venezuela about 9 mill., South Africa about 1 mill., Madagascar 5 mill., 

 Tropical Australia about 1 mill., other tropical highlands (mainly in the 

 Northern Hemisphere) about 4 mill. 



