Agriculture In The Philippines

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 135, 23 January 1942, Page 5

Agriculture In The Philippines

[ #E Filipinos are primarily an agricultural people, but, even so, only about a arter of the cultivable land is being used. wentyfive thousand square miles of land have not even been explored. It is mountainous land clothed with virgin forest. Many of the trees are of great value as timber. The mahogany trade has been in the hands of the Javanese. Another tree, the gaiac, which grows only in poor land; is so valuable that it is sold by weight, and not by measurement. It produces the hardest of all wood, known in the trade as lignum vitae, A Filipino farm occupies on the average less than six acres. The soil is immensely rich, and grows in protusion all the most delicious tropical fruits. The largest acreage is under paddy rice, which is grown on skilfully constructed terraces on the Aillsides. A mountain stream is gently conducted trom terrace to terrace over the Sprouting rice, until it reaches the valley, The next most important crop is suget, which finds a ready market in the United States. Tobacco is grown in northern Luzon, and anybody who has smoked a manila cigar will know that it is of very fine quality. But the most individual crop of the Philippines is hemp. In Manila, the hemp is woven into the highest quality rope, which goes out to tie up ships in all the great ports of the world.--("The Philippine Islands," National Service Talk, 2YA, December 20-)7°" :