Small Estates Research Articles

Plantation and Agriculture in Malaya, with Notes on the Trade of Singapore

ONE of the outstanding features of agriculture in Malaya is unbalanced production, characterized by the extensive cultivation of crops for export markets, and the total inadequacy of the food-crops grown in the country to supply the local demand. Rubber occupies nearly two-thirds of the cultivated area and accounts for 90 per cent. of the value of the export trade in agri? cultural products. Malaya produces about 40 per cent. of her requirements of rice, the staple food of the people. Important export crops include coconuts, pineapples, oil palm, spices, areca-nuts, and tapioca. There is a large import trade in rice, coflfee, tea, ground-nuts, sugar, tobacco, livestock, meat, dairy produce, poultry, and eggs. With the exception of the oil palm and the pineapple, crop production is mixed in character. The oil palm is grown exclusively in plantations. About two-thirds of the acreage under pineapples is now devoted to their sole cultivation. Rubber, coconuts, and other crops are grown under a variety of conditions: on large estates exceeding 100 acres in extent, on small estates which are owned mainly by Chinese, and in the typical Malay kampongs or smallholdings where rubber, coconuts, areca-nuts, gambier, and various fruits are intercultivated. The cultivation of rice under sawah conditions is the most persistent form of agriculture in the Malay kampongs. Catch-crops are cultivated with rubber, the oil palm, and other crops on newly established plantations so that there may be some return before the major crop comes into bearing about the sixth year; they include tapioca, pineapples, bananas, gambier, and Coffea robusta. The cultivation of catch-crops is decreasing owing to the dangers of soil erosion and to the cultivation of cover-crops. Methods of soil conservation are commonly employed and include various forms of drainage and the cultivation of cover-crops. The more common forms include silt pits, contour terracing (or bunding), and contour drains. Silt pits or deep trenches about 15 feet in length are dug along the contours about 15 feet apart. The silt pits along a particular contour cover the gaps in the contour above, so that storm water and soil wash are checked. The ends of the silt pits on the several contours are sometimes linked by a zigzag system of bunds or ridges. Silt-pitting is now less popular than formerly, owing partly to the high costs of construction and maintenance. In contour terracing a succession of level terraces are constructed along the contours, the soil which is thrown on the downhill side being retained by a stone wall or reinforced by the cultivation of a dense cover. On some rubber estates drains are constructed along the contours in order to check storm wash. In Malaya such drainage methods are generally considered temporary expedients while cover-crops or plants which spread rapidly over the surface of the ground are established. The dense, low-growing cover-crop reduces weeding costs, checks rain wash, binds soil particles together, assists aeration and drainage by its rootlets, and improves the texture of the soil by the addition of humus. The cultivation of a cover-crop may deprive the main crop of certain essential

The Preparation of Latex and Determination of Quality

Abstract Latex production has steadily increased during the last few years, as shown by the figures in Table I, which have been extracted from data published by the International Rubber Regulation Committee. Since 1934, output has nearly doubled, and for this year it is estimated, from the average figures for the first nine months of the year, that it will amount to approximately 35,000 tons. No statistics are published as to the respective amounts of preserved field latex and concentrated latex which comprise this 35,000 tons, but assuming the latex to contain an average of 50 per cent dry rubber, this quantity would represent approximately 16,000,000 gallons. Almost the whole of this latex is exported from Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies, only a negligible quantity being shipped from other rubber-growing countries. This production is confined to relatively few estates and in this respect affords a strong contrast to the production of estate rubber in the form of sheet or crepe, which is spread over many estates and small holdings (in Ceylon alone it is computed that rubber is produced on 100,000 estates and small holdings, mostly the latter). Latex production must of necessity be limited to the larger estates for both technical and commercial reasons, as the smallest consignments which are conveniently handled by European importers are around 500 gallons, and for some estates even the production of this quantity entails bulking several days' crop. On the other hand, some large estates export regularly 20,000 gallons or more every month, and the practice is growing of bulking supplies from individual small estates at central factories.

The Site of the City of Kalar in Kalar Dasht

rubber and oil-palm estates, small Chinese estates and gardens, and patches of jungle and secondary jungle. The remainder of the Section was employed on the west coast. This coast of Johore is low-lying and mainly swampy, the 50-foot contour generally being about I2 miles from the coast. Along the coast there is a fringe of mangrove swamp about half a mile wide and inside this a belt of cultivation, mainly native coconut palm plantations, from 3 to io miles wide. From the edge of cultivation to the main road there is jungle swamp and frequently flooded land. The cultivated part of this area is intersected with hundreds of small parits (canals for draining) and some large parits and a few rivers, navigable for sampans. It has a large Malay population, as well as several small Chinese towns and villages. Topographical work in both these districts, although frequently impeded by floods, was simple and progressed rapidly. Owing to the absence of hills, except near Batu Pahat, we had a certain amount of difficulty in fixing trigonometrical points. Time did not allow any theodolite traverses, and the few points required were mainly resections and intersections from the western points of our central Johore triangulation scheme. In this area we were able to make considerable use of aeroplane photographs of the coast and rivers, and also of the Revenue Survey work of the Johore Survey Department.