NEW COTTON LAND.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4817, 2 March 1925, Page 4

NEW COTTON LAND.

WHAT HAS BEEN DON IN SUDAN,

MOSLEMS .MADE AFFLUENT. ’(By G. War'd Price, in the Daily Mail.) U’ntil a British company, began *o alter it out of all recognition trpm its natural state the Gezira grew nothing regularly but yellow grass anil scrubby trees that have learnt to do without water. The Land did, indeed, have native proprietors, but since it yielded insufficient grain to keep them alive, most of them were necessarily absentee landlords. They regarded their plots in the trustful way that many of us consider our less cautious investments in miming shares —as worthless at the moment, but capable some day of yielding a return.

For at rare yearly intervals it rains in the Gezirm When this happened landlords would come trekking in from all parts to snatch a crop. But between these irregular declarations of a dividend many owners died, .and since by Moslem law a man's possessions are divided equally among his numerous heirs, the Gezira long ago became a jigsaw' patchwork of scraps of land, uncertain in their ownership and completely neglected, except when an occasional summer brought with it the' rain that alone made them of any value. So that when the Sudan Government started its scheme to make this area permanently fertile by building the Sennar Dam to irrigate it, the first .thing needful was, to regularise the system of land tenure. PUZZLE-PLOTS TERRITORY. . Tn this end a Doomsday Book sru- * vey of the Gezira was undertaken, winch required six years. . Grubby bits of parchment covered with crab-, bed Arabic had to be deciphered; -vague and often contradictory evidence was patiently taken; wrinkled ol,<t men were made to tax their memories, and at last some 8000 natives were registered as owners in this puzzle-plot territory.

By the Gezira Land Ordinance ef

1921 every landholder was required to lease his property to the Sudan Government for 40 years at a’ rent of 2s an acre. That was about what most of it was worth in its unirrigated state. But the owner got more than his rent. He also retained cultivating tenant-rights in one of the new 30-acre plots, neatly bounded b.v canals for bringing the life-giving water, into which 100,000 acres of the Gezira are already divided. A man owning more than 30 acres could nominate relatives to till similar plots to the amount of his property.

But cotton >is not the sort of crop these Sudanese are used to —of which you push the seed into 'the ground and leave the rest to Allah, Constant supervision is needed to grow good cotton. So a British' company was formed to control the cultivation m 'co-partnership with the leaseholding 'Government amt the working proprietor.

The Sudan Plantations Syndicate, as it is called, acts as overseer and managing agent of the whole estate, it ploughs the land,' supplies the tenant with good seed, shows him how to plant arid tend it, keeps the irrigating canals and machinery in order, and finally gins and riiarket;s the cotton.

The return that the Syndicate gets for its activities, which include the maintenance of nearly a hundred experts and inspectors on' the spot, is 25 per cent, of the proceeds of the cotton, crop. Out of this it will pay the interest on its two and a half millions of subscribed and borrowed capital—some of which has been issued at a premium. Its concession is for ten yeaps, and may be prolonged by four

Another 35 per cent, of the money received from 'cotton sales goes to the Sudan Government, and the remaining 40 per cent, to the native cultivators, divided among them in proportion to the yields of their respective plots, less the cost of ploughing am’ seed and any advances they may have received. : AFFLUENCE. ft is hoped that the yield may be as high as 300'11? per acre. Next year

there will be 100,000 acres bearing annually; A 7001 b bale of Sakell cotton at present fetches £BO in Alexandria. Thus, if that yield is reached each cultivator of 10 acres, drawing 40 per cent., will get a little more than £lOO a year, less working expenses. The actual expectation is that he will average about £6O a year. This means real affluence for the lucky inhabitants of the Gezira, The;are the envy of. their unirrigated neighbours, for this same area used to yield only £BO,OOO worth of millet a year, or £8 worth a head for 10,000 cultivators. * Already the Syndicate has 20,000 acres under cotton in the Gezira aiea. These were developed for the training of both tenants and Syndicate staff. WHOLE SUDAN TO BENEFIT. Such are the hopes and chances of one o? the greatest schemes of Imperial development in modern time-, carried through remarkably quickly. 1 have visited it in all its pans, from where the unsuspecting Nile will oe suddenly seized for utilitarian purposes by the Sennar dam to wheie 320 ginning machines at Barakat await the cotton grown by its help. Tlie whole Sudan will benefit, for this, large area of assured water supply will act as a potential grain reserve for a great part of the country. It is British energy tha has carried through this project, and British investors and taxpayers who bear the risk. Egypt, our supposed sleeping partner in the Sudan, has done nothing but raise factious and fallacious opposition..