Cereals 
A S agriculture is tending to take a progres- 
sively more important position in the 
industrial life of Malaya, more attention 
must be paid to the fundamental requirements — 
food, shelter, clothing — of our agriculturists and 
the labouring classes. 
These fundamental necessities, usually obscured in 
importance by the vast superstructure of con- 
veniences, luxuries and the ordered security of 
modern civilization, only assume their true values 
whenever humanity is overwhelmed by a terrible 
calamity such as the Great War or the more recent 
earthquake in Japan. 
Cereals form the staple diet of all the toiling 
millions of the world's workers and their importance 
as the most valuable of economic crops has been 
recognised from earliest times. 
We read of their cultivation more than 4,000 years 
ago, and their significance in the rise and fall of 
Empires right down to modern times has always 
been forced upon us. Neither public works nor 
industrial pursuits of any kind can be carried on 
without ample supplies of the “staff of life” for 
the labouring masses, and the price of cereal food 
is a basal factor in every possible undertaking. 
During the years 1917 and 1918 the problem of 
local food supplies greatly perplexed the Government 
in Malaya because the country was dependent largely 
on imported cereals, which became alarmingly scarce 
on account of restricted' shipping and because of 
the increased European demand for rice, so that 
the sources of supply were unable to cope with the 
enormous demands. Hence it became necessary to 
