Extensive Operations Of Samoan Estates

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29871, 11 July 1962, Page 14

Extensive Operations Of Samoan Estates

[By N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent who recently toured the Pacific Islands)

WELLINGTON, July 10.

The biggest commercial enterprise in Western Samoa is the Western Samoan Trust Estates Corporation, a farming business with capital assets of more than £1 million, which was handed over as a going concern by New Zealand in 1957. The corporation controls some 30,000 acres of which about 16,000 acres are under cultivation; 9000 acres comprises unimproved bushland, watersheds and forest reserves; and 5000 acres are leased to individual tenants.

The corporation in 1960 produced 1702 tons of copra valued at £129.000 (about a ninth of the total Western Samoan production). 450 tons of cocoa valued at £97,304 (an eighth of total production) and more than 5.000.0001 b of meat (more than 85 per cent, of total production). The corporation is now growing coffee and this year will have 14 tons for sale and soon will have an annual production of 300 tons. Large White pigs have been introduced and are doing well; nutmeg and pepper trees are being grown. Samoan teak trees are cut in the corporation’s own sawmill and used in its furniture factory. It has a wholesale store and owns a hotel. The corporation is the biggest employer of labour in the country, giving work to more than 4000 out of a population of 113,000. The present general manager of the corporation is Mr P. W. H. Keely, a New Zealander, who was a school teacher in Samoa many years ago. A former general manager of the estates is the New Zealand Minister of Island Territories (Mr Gotz). Originally the estates consisted of 113,560 acres of German plantation lands taken over as the New Zealand Reparation Estates from the Germans in 1914. New Zealand, as the administering authority until 1957, returned an estimated £636,500 to Western Samoa from accumulated profits. The money was used for the building of the new Samoa College, teachers’ training college, provision of an X-ray plaint and a radio broadcasting system, financing of a scholarship scheme, for medical research and to investigations on the rhinoceros beetle which damages and destroys coconut palms Ploughing Back In the last five years, the management of the corporation has been ploughing back

a great deal of its profits into the estates. It has drastically reduced the amounts given to the Government by way of a Treasury account. The money, under the Samoan Amendment Act (No. 2). 1956. and the W.S.T.E.C. Regulations. 1957, must be used for the welfare, economic and social benefit of Samoans. The corporation has one cocoa estate of 2000 acres, which is very large by world standards. Two-thirds of the crop is harvested between October and December before the rainy season brings the black rot disease. The cocoa beans are processed in the corporation’s plants, by fermentation, washing, drying and grading. The cocoa is of high quality and used for blending to make chocolate. The United Kingdom and United States are the biggest buyers. New Zealand buying practically none. The cocoa is £5O to £lOO a ton dearer than African cocoa. The coffee beans (liberica) are treated in a similar fashion in the corporation’s own plants. Five hundred acres of coffee trees are now planted and total production is expected to reach 300 to 400 tons a year. Some of the 14 tons of coffee now being processed is going to Dunedin —a new outlet for Samoa. Planting Cuttings The corporation is now concentrating on planting both cocoa and coffee from cuttings taken from tested good-bearing trees. One of the corporation’s best trees supplied a cutting for Kew Gardens, London. Normal cocoa trees yield from scwt to 6cwt an acre. This particular species of tree, as well as being particularly resistant to disease, have given yields of up to a ton an acre. The cocoa trees are planted about 170 to an acre with lines of dadap trees —known as “the mother of cocoa” — planted betwen rows. The dadap, a nitrogenous tree, is slashed to waist height every month, and falling bits provide a mulch for the cocoa trees.

On the corporation estates, the cocoa plantings are hand weeded. Day labourers are paid 8s a day (male) and 7s (female). Piece-work rates for field workers in the cocoa plantations are 40s an acre, including weeding, pruning, dadap control and disease control.

Kapoc trees are used for breaks in several of the estates, and the kapoc is used locally. Rubber trees, planted many years ago, have not proved commercially successful (mainly because a rubber processing plant in Western Samoa would not be economic) and are being cut out. They are being replaced with coconut palms which yield more profit an acre, particularly when cattle are run on pasture round the grown palm trees. The copra from the coconuts is processed in the corporation’s driers. Cattle From N.Z. The cattle are Polled Herefords, from pedigree stock from New Zealand. On coconut plantations, one head an acre is run. The pasture is sensitive grass and carpet grass, both indigenous strains. Sensitive grass. when touched, immediately folds up and exposes small prickles

for protection. Carpet grass is similar to paspalum. Mr Kelly is a firm believer in rotational grazing and has miles of fencing on the estates to divide the pasture. Cattle thrive on the pasture, and the heat does not seem to affect them unduly. Tuberculosis is no problem provided the cattle are not allowed to grow too old. Most killing for beef is done when the cattle are four years old and average weight is 4501 b An experiment just begun is the crossing of Brahmin bulls with the Hereford heifers. The cattle raising for beef project on the estate had to be started again after World War 11, and it is only since 1953 that an intensive drive for beef production was begun. The corporation now runs 12.000 head out of an estimated 15,000 cattle in the country. Corporation Abattoirs Mr Kelly is very proud of the corporation’s abattoirs, and particularly pleased with German-made dehiding machines —twin, qounter-revolv-ing, electrically-operated, circular saws in a handpiece “which can shrug the hide off. without a scratch on it The thin hides are eagerly sought bv overseas buyers. Some fellows here from Westfield had never seen the dehiders before.” A pet project of Mr Kelly’s at present is the raising of Large White pigs, housed in sties with showers overhead to cool them and help in cleaning the sties at the same time. The pigs are rotationally grazed in small enclosures of pasture, and are fed on offal from abattoirs and waste from the estates’ processing plants. A useful adjunct provided by nature for farming in Western Samoa is the dung beetle. It takes the dung from cattle and pigs into the ground and manure spreading by implements is entirely unnecessary. Another beetle, the rhinoceros, is a pest. Traps of split coconut palm trunks can be seen all round the estates. The female beetles make a beeline for the trunks, arranged in parallel series to lay larvae. The traps are inspected regularly and cleared of beetles and larvae. The Western Samoan Trust Estates Corporation not only contributes most substantially to the country’s overseas income and, through surplus profits, to welfare and economic projects, but also provides for Samoans an example of highly-efficient plantation practice.