Proceedings of the South & East African combined agricultural, cotton, entomological and mycological conference held at Nairobi, August, 1926

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1738588467

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-115043

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Proceedings of the South & East African combined agricultural, cotton, entomological and mycological conference held at Nairobi, August, 1926

Place of publication:: Nairobi

Publisher:: East African Standard

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: VI, 337 Seiten; Ill.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part V. General

Collection:: Economics Books

£0 PART V _ Our next export of importance is cotton—a produce in which we are nearly all much interested. That product has, as you see from the table, reached the second place in importance. In the time of the Germans its order was the fourth place. I am glad to say that, in the course of about four years, we have been able to surpass the German output. In 1913 the German export of cotton was nearly 44,000 cwt.; last year our output was over 90,000 cwt.—more than twice as much. That means that we have done in just over four years more than it took the Germans fifteen years to do. This opens up a question of policy, but I think it is a point in favour—at any rate under our conditions—of a native cotton growing industry. The proportions of the production are at present partly estimated, but I think may be pretty accurately stated at native 639 and non-native 379%. An important matter for the consideration of the Agricultural Department has been prevention of depreciation of the cotton, and as we do not now possess the assistance of technical officials of the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation, or of any other origin, we have had to use rather rough and ready means. In the use of these methods legislation is very important: by legislation we are able to get all the kinds of seed we like that the ginneries may produce, and we distribute that seed freely to the natives. Our aim has been, when obtaining seed, that it should be of first quality, and we have attached great importance (on the advice of our entomologist) to the earliness of cotton; that means that we aim to get seed from the first pickings; but as there is very little difference in the long run we sometimes take some of the second quality as well. In that way we have attempted to prevent the cotton of Tanganyika from deteriorating; and all the reports on it that we have received show that it has not deteriorated. For increasing the quantities of seed of good quality we use seed- farms. We have had, through the kindness of the British Cotton Growing Association in Uganda, a free gift of seed, which we increased from 95 tons to over 500 tons suitable and used for distribu- tion purposes, employing one of the islands of the Territory as a seed-farm; and the production of that 500 tons of seed was accom- plished without one penny of expense to Government. In addition to that, we have a superior cotton, as is proved by different reports, which was produced by Mr. Wood, sometime Cotton Specialist of the Corporation at our station at Mpanganya. This cotton is commonly known as ‘“ M >> Cotton. It is having excellent reports, and we have raised, in the first year of work for its increase the quantity to about 14 tons; and this year we hope to obtain over 150 tons of good seed, or sufficient to supply one whole district in the Territory. That has also been obtained with the co-operation of certain non-native planters, without any expense to Government. From cotton I turn to coffee, the third product in the list, which we found of so much interest this morning. The production of this commodity has increased very greatly since German times and the quality has at the same time improved. In Tanganyika most of our coffee, oddly enough, is produced by natives. We have two distinct coffee industries, one in Bukoba on the western shores of liake Victoria, where over 3,000 tons of coffee are produced almost entirely by natives: then we have in the Northern 2606

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