138 
THE POOD-CROPS OP THE MALAY PENINSULA AND 
SOME THOUGHTS ARISING OUT OF A REVIEW 
OP THEM. 
m 
By I. H. Burkill, m.a., f.l.s. 
( Director of Gardens, 8.8.). 
According to trade statistics, the Malay Peninsula took from 
abroad for feeding itself in the year 1915 : 
Cereals, costing 
Sugar, costing 
Bean seed, and the like, costing 
Vegetables, costing ... 
Fruits, costing 
Condiments of native food, costing... 
paying the bills for these out of income from 
tapioca, and ^pine-apples. 
$23,471,049 
5,789,951 
1,439,278 
1,352,128 
1,274,163 
1,227,455 
rubber, copra, 
sago, 
1 intend to use the privilege of holding your attention by 
speaking of these foods which we buy in such large quantities from 
outside the Peninsula : I shall touch on cereals first, commencing 
with rice. 
Rice. 
. The year 1915 saw nearly fifty-two million dollars worth of rice 
enter our ports, and we kept twenty millions worth to feed ourselves. 
It came from Rangoon, Saigon and Bangkok chiefly. That which 
,eame from Rangoon was the overflow production of a population of 
about one soul to an acre of paddy : it is a growing population, 
and it has been calculated that in fifty years it will eat up 
its own produce, or in less than fifty years if the accepted 
plan of cropping shotild be changed. The same growth of. 
population is occurring in Indo-China and Siam, and will have a 
similar result. Java has already filled up in a wonderful way, and 
has greatly changed its crops, with the result that it no longer sends 
overseas rice in the same way as formerly. The Philippine Islands 
have ceased to export and import. These changes are worth 
. thinking over; and the more one thinks the more important does 
rice growing appear to be in the Malay Peninsula. 
Rice, unfortunately, pays comparatively poorly : so that officers 
charged with the duty of insuring its extension are confronted with 
great difficulties. Rice cultivation in the East is, at it were, the 
handmaid of all other cultivation — without rice the others could 
not exist — and it is paid in the manner of handmaids. 
I propose to pass quickly ‘along the ends of the avenues leading 
from the present position to greater profits, but merely glancing 
down them. 
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