No limit to area, no premium to encourage padi growing
Published on: Saturday, December 19, 2020
By: British North Borneo Herald
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Harvesting padi in Penampang in 1949.
In order to encourage the cultivation of rice in this country, the Government has granted specially favourable conditions on which land can be taken up for the cultivation of this, our most important food staple.
There is no limitation to area, and no premium is charged, the rent being the same as that obtaining on peasant terms with the proviso that a rebate of $1.50 will be given when the rent is $2 per acre. and of $2.50 when the rent is S3.00 per acre, so that while the land is actually under rice cultivation the rent, after the first six years when it is only 10 cts. per acre, would not exceed 50 cts. per acre.
To recapitulate:
Area not limited.
Premium — nil.
Rent for first 6 years ... 10 cts. per acre.
Rent for next 4 years ... 50 cts. per acre.
Rent for next 5 years ... $2 per acre less rebate $1.50 = 50 cts.
Rent thereafter ... $3 per acre less rebate $2.50 = 50 cts.
It is hoped that by this means the cultivation of rice will be encouraged and so increased that this country will gradually become more and more independent of imports of foreign rice, and not therefore liable to suffer from enhancement of prices when there is a rice shortage in Burma or Siam, from which countries the bulk of rice imports is obtained.
Improvement of Water Control
Naturally the question arises as to measures which might be taken to increase rice production in Malaya. The question is so vast and so difficult that it is impossible to discuss it in any detail now, while it literally bristles with controversial points, but there are one or two obvious points to which I can allude.
The first of these is the need for improvement of water control; this is really the beginning and the end of successful, rice culture with the exception of two schemes, the irrigation and drainage scheme of Krian and the controlled drainage system of Kedah, no large scale water control schemes have so far been evolved in Malaya though there is plenty of scope for this.
The major part of the padi is rain grown, and no provision exists for getting water on and off the land; the latter is just as important, if not more important, than the former.
To improve rice cultivation, improvement in water control schemes are essential under Malayan conditions: these must take the form of drainage and irrigation works, but in Malaya drainage comes first, although irrigation is, of course, also badly needed.
Malaya is fortunate enough to possess an ample and normally well distributed rainfall, and this, though it does not minimise the necessity for irrigation, at least naturally eases the situation as compared with, say parts of India.
Again improvements are capable of being effected as we have seen by the employment of more rational and economic cultivation methods, by the extension of the use of improved strains of seeds, and by the improvement of the economic conditions of the cultivators, many of who are heavily in debt.
A point which has lately attracted a good deal of notice is whether or not rice can be grown as a commercial proposition on an estate scale by mechanical means. For a number of years past it has been so grown in the Southern and Western States of America, in-Australia, in Northern Italy and in parts of Spain, but until lately it has been supposed that such conditions are not capable of reproduction in tropical Asia.
In point of fact, this belief is erroneous and we have now proved positively that rice cultivation can be undertaken as a commercial proposition employing modern mechanical methods for preparing the land, sowing and reaping the crop; that provided the requisite conditions can be satisfied, these methods are capable of producing the crop at very considerably cheaper price than the old-fashioned native methods, and are capable of yielding considerable profits.
Cultivation at $20 per acre
Demonstrations of this have been given in a number of places in India, in parts of Siam and in parts of, I believe, Burma where they are working successfully on these lines. I myself was privileged to see such operations in Southern Siam where an area of 600 acres was being cultivated in rice by the use of implements throughout which yielded a return of 450 gantangs of padi per acre and employing a staff of 38 men, the all-in cost of these operations being in the region of some $20 per acre.
The necessary pre-requisite to undertaking such cultivation is that water supply should he absolutely under control; it must be possible to get the water on and off the land when it is wanted.
If this is not possible then mechanical cultivation is hopeless. It is also necessary that the land should be level and evenly graded, and it must be free from tree trunks and stones. If these conditions could be satisfied, mechanical cultivation can be employed successfully.
How far conditions in Malaya are such as to render possible the employment of such methods it is yet rather early to say: no doubt suitable areas of land exist, but the cost of getting them into cultivation would probably be high; on the other hand the possibility is there, and as such probably represents the most speedy and effective way of increasing production.
In the brief time at my disposal I can do little more than give you a view of some of the salient points of the rice situation in Malaya. The problem is one of great satisfaction and of considerable complexity:
I do not think that it is a vain hope that Malaya can become much less dependent on imported food than at the present time, although it may be doubted whether it will ever attain so satisfactory a position as its Dutch neighbour in Java, and be able to say to the world” We are in addition to being an exporting agricultural country of the first importance practically independent of imported food.”
On the other hand, it is, I think, remarkable, in view of the case of with which large profits have in past been made from other industries in Malaya, that rice cultivation should have arrived at all, let alone maintained itself on the considerable scale which I have shown exists.
It is a tribute to the wisdom of the Malay rulers and also to the indefatigable, unobtrusive and I am afraid some-times unappreciated work of many district officers and other officials. Nowadays the rightness of the policy is becoming more evident, and as a result of it we have a valuable nucleus from which further expansion is possible.
(The above are extracts from an address on “Rice in Malaya” given by Dr H.A. Tempany, Director of Agriculture, F.M.S. and S,.S. and reported in the Straits Budget of 25-12-1930.)
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