Items of Interest May 26, 1917 Issue

Items of Interest

Virgin forest land is usually chosen for coffee planting in India, the jungle being felled and burned. The coffee bushes need shelter from high wind, and from the sun, in hot, dry weather, so that cultivation is always under shade in India. Three years after planting, the bushes begin to bear, and at five to seven years old they are in full bearing. The age to which a coffee bush can profitably be grown is said to be in the neighborhood of fifty years. The bushes in bloom are masses of starry white flowers, with a syringa-like scent. The crop is picked from October to January. The trees are picked over several times at intervals of a week or so, and the ripe berries taken at each round. The berries brought to the factory by the pickers are pulped to remove the outside jacket. The beans as they come from the pulper are coated with a slimy, sugary substance, which is removed by a certain amount of fermentation. When this is complete, the coffee is washed, and then spread out on tables or mats and constantly turned over in the sun until it is thoroughly and evenly dry. In this stage it is known as parchment coffee. It is then placed in machines which take off the husk, or parchment, and polish the bean.

The Indian Trade Journal says that there is no agricultural college in Burma, and agricultural education is confined to the training, mostly practical, of the subordinate staff of the department. It is proposed to start a school of agricultural research in connection with the projected Burma University, which will train graduates for the higher posts in the agricultural service. The main achievement of the department so far has been the production of improved strains of rice. Promising results have attended the experimental cultivation of cotton. Sugar-cane has been successfully introduced in the area irrigated from the Mon canals in the Minbu district, and its cultivation is now spreading. Much attention has been paid to wheat; the area under this crop has risen to 41,000 acres, and there is reason to believe that it can be cultivated with profit over the greater part of northern Burma. The possibility of the cultivation of jute, which is grown only to a small extent in Burma at present, has been considered. The crop is more valuable than rice, and its substitution for rice over a large part of lower Burma would benefit the cultivators and increase the land revenue.

That a great mistake was made in allowing such large areas of timber land in the public domain, "beyond all needs of local or industrial development," to pass so rapidly into private ownership, is the conclusion of the United States Forest Service made in a recent report covering some of the more pressing problems in the lumber industry. The report urges that what it describes as "the obvious remedy" be applied, "that of taking part of the western timber lands back" into the hands of the Federal Government. The report continues: "Lumbermen in the West are carrying vast quantities of timber land beyond all possible needs of their present sawmills and logging camps. The business of making lumber has been loaded down with investments in timber land. The productive branch of the industry has been interlocked too largely with speculations in its raw material; and instead of standing on its own feet as a manufacturing business, has tended to be made frequently to serve the exigencies of timber speculation. Pressure from an overload of timber is the first cause of the general instability of the industry."

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