FEEDING SIXTY MILLION

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1935, Page 6

FEEDING SIXTY MILLION

JAPAN’S VITAL PROBLEM FRUIT TREES FOR MOUNTAINS. PRESSURE OF THE POPULATION. COMPARISONS BY DR. KAGAWA. Some conception of the immensity of the population problem confronting Japan to-day was given at New Plymouth yesterday by Dr. Toyohiko Kagawa, noted Christian leader and sociologist, at present on a tour of New Zealand. Addressing a large audience at the Opera House, Dr. Kagawa dealt' briefly but comprehensively with one of the most vital factors in the politics of the East to-day, suggesting skilfully the gravity Of the , problem and backing an appeal for understanding by a few salient facts and figures. The Japanese people had suffered so terribly in the past that the problem of suicide was one of the greatest facing the country to-day. Fifteen thousand people destroyed themselves every year. ' In a country only very little larger than New Zeeland, he said, there was a population of 65,000,000, and where a high percentage of New Zealand’s. land was arable, only 15 per cent, of Japan’s area was fit for agricultural cultivation. Not one square in6h of that could be wasted. The interior was traversed by huge mountain ranges up to 10,000 feet high where crops would not grow, To add to this already serious state of affairs the population was -increasing at 'the rate of 1,000,000 -a year.

The problem of making such a country produce food enough for its teeming millions was now being attacked in this way: More and more fruit and nut trees such as oaks, chestnuts and walnuts were being planted on the slopes of the mountains where nothing else would grow, so that every tiny section of suitable land could' be cropped with* rice and barley. .'. ( There were only 650 rivers in the entire country; thus, the density of agricultural population created yet another problem which could only be met by the success of the new tree cultivation, which would eventually disperse agrarian population more or less evenly.

“The Bible,” said Dr. Kagawa with a smile, “has taught Japan a lot—it has taught us that wriggling on the ground like the serpent in the Garden of Eden is no good. We must eat the fruit of the Trees of Life.” Afforestation is apparently a matter very close to the heart of the visitor. He claimed that history has shown that where trees have been destroyed deserts have grown up. The Gobi desert of Mongolia, he said, was once a dense wilderness of trees that had been destroyed by- man throughout the centuries. The civilisations of Mesopotamia had destroyed the trees along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates—and again a desert had been the result. Precisely the same thing was happening in the central States of North America. Dust storms were blowing over the land where trees had once grown.