PART 11. j 
suitable for storage. They could not store plantains, and maize would 
require corrugated iron stores. In regard to cassava they did not 
insist on the planting of any definite amount but records were kept of 
the acreage planted in each district. 
Mr. CAMERON had seen the system in certain districts in 
Southern Rhodesia which were liable to famine. He did not think 
there was any question of compulsion. 
Mr. WORTLEY said that he had been urging the importance of 
this matter on the Nyasaland Government but that they were faced 
with the difficulty of dealing with maize, which was the chief diet of 
their natives. 
POSSIBILITIES OF CO-OPERATION AMONG NATIVES IN 
EAST AFRICA. 
Mr. KIRBY made the following statement: — 
Tribes vary in intelligence and enterprise. It is thought that the 
benefits of co-operation will appeal to tribes on the hicher nlane of 
these qualities. In what directions should it be beeun? Wherever 
the possession and use of capital goods will improve agriculture, it 
might well begin with the provision of funds to procure these goods. 
An example is with ploughing. Experience in Tanganyika Territory 
has shown that the native character is averse to communal agriculture 
(ploughing, with cultivating, marketing and sharing of proceeds), but 
not to co-operative ploughing alone. Co-operation, in fact, is the only 
means available, to the large body of them, of securing plouchs. Tt 
is, moreover, the only economical means of using the plough, for. with 
individual ownership and small fields, the use of the rloungh will not 
cover its annual cost in interest and depreciation, and the hiring of 
ploughs is uneconomical. Co-operative credit has not been attempted 
and it would be interesting to learn what efforts. have been made in 
other countries with this form of en-operation in particular, and any 
form in general, among African natives. 
(The above was circulated in the form of a note under T.C.(C)Ag.14.) 
Mr. SIMPSON said that his experience, of the subject had not 
been very wide and he knew of no experiment having been made on 
the lines suggested. In Uganda they had tried communal ploughing 
and in some areas it had been successful. He had been trying to work 
on another principle, namely the development of an individualistic 
attitude. In olden days the chie’s had power of life and death over 
their subjects who were compelled to work for their chief when 
required. The Uganda Government was trying to make it possible 
for every man to get the financial benefit of his own work. When 
that system reached a certain stage, it might be possible to evolve 
some method of co-partnership among individuals but the individual 
must feel himself economically free before he could enter into partner- 
ship with others. 
y Mr. MILLIGAN said that with ploughing of course there was the 
difficulty that every man ought to own his own plough; as a method 
of introducing the use of implements, however, co-operative purchase 
might be very useful. In India he had found on several occasions 
that there were as many as four or five owners of ploughs. This was 
however due to the fact that they were purchasing ploughs for 
secondary operations. 
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