Part 4
In considering the question as to whether Germany will ever be in a position to supply her own demands in rubber from her own colonies, Dr. Paul Preuss, writing in the _India Rubber Journal_, says that it depends on three factors: (1) Soil, (2) Climate, (3) Labour. “Regarding soil,” he says, “the Colonies of Cameroon and New Guinea alone possess several hundred thousand acres of land suited for the cultivation of the most valuable rubber trees. The climate there is also very favourable. Taking the annual requirements of Germany in rubber at 16,000 tons, this quantity can be produced from an area of 150,000 to 170,000 acres exclusively planted with Hevea, and from 200,000 to 250,000 acres under cultivation with the various species already planted, but with Hevea predominating. Even if the demand for the raw material should considerably increase, the answer to this question would be an affirmative as regards soil and climate; whether, however, with the accompanying development in the cultivation of cacao, cotton, cocoa-nut and oil-palms, &c., the necessary labour will be procurable for such an extension in rubber cultivation, the question cannot be answered.” It has been stated that in the coming years, when the rubber plantations are ready for tapping, and the tobacco plantations are demanding the services of thousands of natives, the insufficiency of labour will prove a serious problem, and the importation of Chinese labour was submitted to the consideration of the German Government as a feasible solution.
RICE, COFFEE, COCOA, AND TOBACCO.
During recent years the cultivation of rice has received more attention, especially in the experimental gardens. The forest land inhabitants have also begun to lay out water and hill rice fields in great extent, and it is only a question of time for the Cameroons to become a rice producing country. But whether the negroes will ever be capable of carrying out the troublesome cultivation of water rice, with the necessary transplanting and careful watering, is regarded as doubtful.
One can depend with greater confidence on the exportation of maize and millet from the forest land and the drier hinterland, as soon as means of transport are provided, as it has been found that the black can be entrusted with this cultivation. Rice, as well as maize and millet, and also bananas and pines, which grow in great quantities, would be, as native cultivation solely, open to question.
Regarding the cultivation of coffee, the greatest hopes were raised in the first years of occupation of the colony. The Cameroon Mountains resemble in every respect the island of San Thomé and Fernando-Po, where, in 1884, a flourishing coffee cultivation existed. Nothing was more natural than the expectation than that a fresh impetus would be given to coffee cultivation on the mainland, but these hopes were not fulfilled, and now scarcely any coffee plantations are to be found. Tea was planted in Buea by Deistel, and the tea-shrub developed splendidly.
Plantation cocoa has borne the preponderating share of the total exports of that product in recent years, the areas in bearing having increased as follows: 1909, 13,328 acres; 1910, 15,290 acres; 1911, 17,560 acres; 1912, 20,438 acres. The large increase of exports in 1912 is attributed to the very favourable weather in that year. It is stated that more care, with artificial manuring, is wanted in the cultivation, and that the chief diseases and pests of cocoa, such as brown rot, “cockchafer grubs,” and “bark bugs,” are not under control. Nevertheless the future for cocoa is believed to be good.
Much was expected of tobacco planting, especially in Bibundi, where tobacco was planted at first, and the quality was excellent, although the cultivation was proved to be too dear and too difficult on account of the dampness of the climate. In 1902 there was a deficit of 200,000 marks, and for some time the cultivation was discontinued. Attempts were made in 1911 to encourage tobacco planting in the German colonies by the guarantees of a definite price for quantities of at least 100 cwts. raised and prepared in those colonies. The planted area in plantations in the Cameroons increased from fifty acres in 1911 to 383 in 1912; 230 acres of the latter had yielded a crop. In view of the expensive nature of the cultivation, it was hoped that Cameroons’ leaf for wrappers would gain a good market.
The planting of the Kola-nut was undertaken very energetically, and in 1904, 400 were planted in Garna, but with what result is unknown. The experimental cultivations in the gardens of Victoria have produced no palpable result. The trees flourished and bore fruit, but it was entirely consumed by worms. The natives, on the other hand, cultivate this tree in great extent in the forest land, and especially in the Kimbo highland. Among different plants, especially in the trial gardens, are the vanilla, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and other spices. Vanilla was quite destroyed by blight in Victoria. Pepper, cloves and cinnamon all furnish excellent productions.
PALM OIL CULTIVATION.
The oil-palm in the old days was the glorious heritage of the native, who found a ready sale for such oil as his women-folk were able to extract by a slow and laborious process. It is likely that the native believed that so long as he retained the tree and the fruit, his time-honoured oil business would never be taken from him, but the great and growing demand for oil has beaten him, and he is fast losing the trade because he can no longer make the quantity that the market requires. Palm oil is now requisitioned for a hundred-and-one new uses. It is no longer the monopoly of the soap-maker or the chandler. Palm oil deodorised by hydrogen is needed for the “nut butters” of the vegetarian; makers of nitro-glycerine explosives derive their glycerine constituents more and more from palm oil; whilst the exploiters of novelties in metal polishes ransack the ship’s hold for leakages from the palm-oil cask. Oil must be had in increasing quantity; machinery speeds up the production; yet still the cry is for more oil, until the European himself attempts to become owner of thousands of trees, eagerly and not too scrupulously encroaching on lands that once were considered native, in the vain hope of finding a speedier road to prosperity.
THE PALM TREE AND ITS PRODUCTS.
The profitable carrying on of this industry depends on the demand for palm oil and the use which can be made of the residues. That the supply of palm kernels themselves should decline is unthinkable. The steady increase in their growth in all parts of the West African Coast is conclusive evidence of their almost limitless possibilities. Moreover, the statistics clearly show the extensive nature of the demand. Great Britain and Germany are no longer the only purchasers; South Africa has entered the market, as well as Holland and France, though their lots are comparatively small, and could not in any way effect the profitable exploitation of kernel-crushing on a large scale.
In a paper read before the Royal Colonial Institute, entitled “The War: British and German Trade in Nigeria,” Mr. R. E. Dennett, of the Forest Department, Nigeria, made it abundantly evident that Germany had been farming the commerce of the Protectorates to the detriment of the Britisher. He showed from statistics that Germany’s export trade to Nigeria greatly exceeded ours, while of the Nigerian produce which left the country, Germany in 1913 took nearly all the copra, half the cocoa, more than two-thirds of the palm kernels, one-eighth of the palm oil, half the hides, one-third of the mahogany, more than half the ground-nuts, over a third of the shea nuts, and all the palm kernel cake.
On the subject of the palm tree and its products, Mr. Dennett is both interesting and instructive, and in view of its inevitable increase in importance as a British industry, the following extracts from his paper may be usefully reproduced here.
“People who have little or no knowledge of the palm tree (_Elæis guineensis_) confuse the palm fruit with the palm kernel. The palm kernel of commerce is the seed of the palm tree. This is surrounded by a hard shell, and it is then called the palm nut. This shell is in its turn covered by an oily fibrous matter, and is then known as the palm fruit. If we take this fruit and cut it into two parts, we can see these three parts of the fruit more distinctly; first the outer yellow covering or the fibrous pericarp, from which the palm oil of commerce is extracted; then the shell, and finally the kernel, from which the white palm kernel oil is extracted.
“The composition of this fruit is as follows:--
Pericarp Oil 18 per cent. Fibre and Moisture 12 “ Shell and Disk 58 “ Kernel 12 “ --- Total 100 “
“The uses of the palm oil tree are various. It yields the palm oil and kernels of commerce. It gives the native a drink he is very fond of, called palm wine, which, when fermented, gives our cooks yeast for bread-making. The shells of the nuts are used by blacksmiths as fuel, as they give off great heat. At the present time there are three methods of making palm oil: (_a_) from the fresh fruit, (_b_) from partially fermented fruit, and (_c_) from well fermented fruit.
THE NATIVE AS CULTIVATOR.
“Bunches of fruit having been severed from the parent tree, are sliced and hammered by natives, using long poles, until the fruit becomes detached from the bunch. The fresh fruit is either prepared at once into what is called soft oil, or allowed to ferment, or partially ferment, and made into hard oil. The procedure followed in making either of these kinds of oil is much the same. The fruit is placed either into canoes or clay troughs, water is poured over them, and then, by treading or beating, the fibrous matter containing the oil is separated from the nuts. The nuts are then taken out and placed in the sun to dry, while the fibrous matter, by further beating or treading, is made to yield the oil which floats to the surface of the water. This oil is ladled out into pots and boiled, and then allowed to rest, so that all dirt or sediment falls to the bottom of the pot. This clean oil, soft or hard, is the palm oil of commerce. This oil is taken in calabashes or tins to the traders’ factory, which, generally speaking, is near to a river or a railway, and there put into casks and sent to the nearest port for shipment to Europe.
“There are, practically speaking, two kinds of palm oil exported from the West Coast, i.e., hard and soft, but soft oil is of two qualities--Lagos and ordinary soft oil. As a rule, Lagos and soft oil is worth £3 to £4 more than hard oil, the reason being that there is about 8 per cent. more glycerine in the soft than in the hard. The percentage of glycerine varies in inverse proportion with the acidity.
“In the olden days one of the chief occupations of slaves was that of cracking palm nuts; now this work is left to boys and women. After the nuts have been dried in the sun, they are heaped up under little sheds to protect them from the rain. In places where rocks are plentiful the nuts are taken there and cracked on them by a stone held in the hand of the cracker. In other places the nuts are put on a block of wood resting on the ground between the cracker’s legs and struck with a piece of iron held in the cracker’s right hand. In this way one worker will crack from 15 lbs. to 25 lbs. of kernels per day. The kernels are then packed in different kinds of baskets and taken to markets near rivers, where they are bought by native middlemen. Competition is very keen, and so these middlemen are tempted to adulterate the kernels by adding shells to them or by soaking them in water for two or three days. Finally, they are taken in canoes down rivers or by rail to the European traders and sold by measurement at so much a bushel.... Think of it! 241,000 tons of palm kernels shipped to Hamburg in 1913, and nearly every nut containing one kernel is cracked by hand.”
THE FUTURE OF PALM OIL AND KERNEL INDUSTRY.
Although the palm kernel industry has not attained important dimensions in the Cameroons, there is no reason why it should not form one of the staple products of the colony, or why the whole of the trade in palm kernels should not be transferred from Germany to this country. Hitherto the quarter of a million tons of palm kernels--valued at over £4,000,000--exported annually from British West Africa has gone to Germany, where crushing-mills and manufacturing plants have been established, while considerable quantities of high-priced kernel oil, in manufactured or unmanufactured form, have been exported from Germany to Great Britain. About 50 per cent. of the produce of the crushed palm kernels is marketed in the form of oil, and the balance is made up into palm kernel cake, practically the whole of which is consumed in Germany, where it commands a good price and is in great demand, especially among dairy farmers.
This profitable German industry has now been suspended owing to the war, which has rendered it necessary for planters to find a new market for their produce, and the opportunity seems propitious for an endeavour to establish it in Great Britain upon a substantial scale. With a view to arousing interest in the subject in commercial and agricultural circles, Sir Owen Phillipps, K.C.M.G., Chairman of the West African section of the London Chamber of Commerce, has issued a timely pamphlet in which the present position of the trade is described and its potentialities are indicated. The Anglicisation of the industry, in addition to promoting Imperial commercial intercourse, and securing increased industrial employment in the United Kingdom, would furnish British farmers--who are complaining of the enhanced prices of present foods--with a new supply of a relatively cheap and excellent feeding material.
The profitable exploitation of this crushing industry depends upon the capacity of the British market to absorb a larger supply of palm kernel oil and upon the possibility of inducing British farmers to adopt the use of palm kernel cake. There are at present two mills, both at Liverpool, for dealing with palm kernels, capable together of crushing annually about 70,000 tons, leaving a balance unprovided for of at least 180,000 tons. To cope with this additional quantity several of the great milling companies of Liverpool, London, Hull, &c., have already made and are making alterations in their machinery in order to crush palm kernels, so that in the near future much greater quantities will be dealt with. A new mill on the Thames, at Erith, is also being erected, which, when completed after the war, will be capable of crushing a very large quantity.
PALM KERNEL CAKE FOOD.
In order to ascertain whether British farmers would be prepared to make a larger use of palm kernel cake, Sir Owen Phillipps placed himself in communication with the leading agricultural authorities in all parts of the country--principals of agricultural colleges, experimental stations, &c., and these gentlemen have taken up the matter with the greatest enthusiasm. They are practically unanimous in asserting that the fact of large quantities of palm kernel cake being available at a price comparing favourably with that of other similar foods (now becoming more expensive than formerly) has only to be brought to the notice of farmers to ensure a greatly increased demand; in fact, that farmers are looking out for a new and comparatively cheap feeding material. Many of the principals and professors of the colleges referred to in various parts of the country have undertaken an elaborate series of comparative experimental feeding tests with palm kernel and other cakes, so as to demonstrate the merits of the former. When these are completed the results will be made widely known to the agricultural community.
In an article published in the _Field_ on “Palm Kernel Cake,” Mr. F. J. Lloyd, F.I.C., points out that a really good cake, made from this product, is now available in this country. The nutrients in palm kernel cake are quite exceptionally digestible, and one German authority says that, “owing to its pleasant taste, its great digestibility, and the way in which cattle thrive on it, no cake fetches so high a price.” It increases the yield of milk, improves the quality as regards butter fat, and is said to impart a good colour to the butter, so that it is especially valuable for winter feeding. Though mainly used in Germany for dairy cattle, Professor Lloyd adds that it has also been given with satisfactory results to steers, sheep, and pigs.
PALM KERNEL STATISTICS.
The _Bulletin_ of the Imperial Institute contains an article calling attention to the magnitude of the trade in palm kernels, and discussing its commercial aspect. The following table shows the quantities and values from each of the chief producing countries in West Africa in 1912:--
_Quantities._ _Values._
British Possessions: _Tons._ _Tons._ £ £ Gambia 445 6,518 GoldCoast 14,629 205,365 Nigeria 184,624 2,797,411 Sierra Leone 50,751 793,178 -------- 250,449 --------- 3,802,472
French Possessions: Dahomey 36,708 535,937 Gaboon 354 4,671 Guinea 5,054 41,079 Ivory Coast 6,692 70,710 Senegal 1,736 28,221 ------ 50,544 ------ 680,618
Belgian Congo -- -- 110,835
German Possessions: Kamerun 15,742 220,300 Togoland 11,456 168,978 ------- 27,198 ------- 389,278 ------- ---------- Totals 328,191 £4,983,203
This article also gives the average value of the kernels, which in Hamburg ranges from £18 2s. to £19 2s. per ton (June, 1914); the value in Liverpool was £17 17s. 6d. to £18 18s. 9d. per ton in July last, and in September was £16 7s. 6d. to £17 10s. per ton.
Palm kernel oil is used for the same purposes as cocoa-nut oil, viz., the manufacture of soap and candles and the preparation of various edible fats, such as margarine, cooking fats, vegetable “butters,” and chocolate fats. By suitable treatment it can be separated into a liquid portion (olein) and a hard white fat (palm kernel stearin), and in this way the consistence of the material can be varied for the preparation of different edible products. These edible palm kernel oil products are prepared on a very large scale in Germany and elsewhere, and are largely imported into this country. With palm kernels at £17 to £18 per ton, the value of palm kernel oil in the United Kingdom is from £36 5s. to £36 15s. per ton, with Ceylon cocoa-nut oil at £40 per ton.
It is added that British oil-seed crushers who undertook to work them would find no difficulty in getting a market for the oil among soap-makers and makers of edible fats. Although the article points out that some difficulty might be experienced in finding a market quickly in the United Kingdom for the palm kernel cake, because English farmers do not readily take up feeding stuffs which are new to them, it will be gathered from what has already been said that, thanks to the initiative of Sir Owen Phillipps, this difficulty is likely to be overcome, and the opportunity is a particularly good one now that other feeding stuffs are becoming more expensive, as that is a point which will have great influence. It is not a new feeding material, but all the evidence points simply to the fact that it has only to become better known and available on a large scale to result in mutual benefits to the farmer, the miller, the manufacturer, and the West African colonies.
COTTON.
The cultivation of fibrous plants, which have made a highly satisfactory start in Togoland and East Africa, are to be found in Cameroon only in the preliminary stage. In the experimental garden, Sanseveria, the Romelia-pita from Central America, manilla hemp, Musa textiles, as well as the Uttari jute, have been planted.
Cotton should have a much greater future than the so-called fibrous plant. It is cultivated at present to a great extent south of Lake Chad by the natives, and the cultivation of cotton has been called systematic, as only one to two year-old plants are harvested. In that region the conditions are so favourable that a considerable development of the cotton cultivation may be counted upon, as soon as more favourable communication conditions are made. In the Benue Valley, cotton has also been cultivated for several decades. The whole of the forest and coastland are unfit for this cultivation, and it is somewhat surprising to hear that on the uncultivated lands of the Mandara Mountains, a very beautiful long fibrous cotton grows. At the instigation of the Colonial Agricultural Committee, cotton cultivation made a tremendous start in Togo, and in East Africa as well as in the Cameroons.
The export of timber has increased by leaps and bounds in recent years. While in 1909 timber to the value of only £8,500 was imported, this sum in 1912 had risen to £35,000, and, with the extension of the railway system, the revenue from this source can be increased almost indefinitely.
EXPERIMENTAL AGRICULTURAL WORK.
Dr. Walter Busse, of the Imperial German Colonial Office, writing in the “Bulletin of the Imperial Institute” on “The Organisation of Experimental Work in Agriculture in the German Colonies,” tells us that in Cameroon, as in other parts where land is being opened up for agriculture, the conditions of settlement of the natives, the density of the population, the general standard of civilisation, and the capacity of the natives for any particular kind of activity, all play an important role. “And in proportion as the people incline towards agriculture, so attention must be paid to the inclinations and needs of the separate races, and lastly to the extent, organisation and methods of native agriculture.... The German Colonial Government,” the German colonial official proceeds to explain, “has laid it down as a principle that native agriculture in the tropical colonies should be allowed to develop freely side by side with plantations under European control, wherever this does not interfere with higher interests. Local conditions will decide how far in each particular region this or that method of organising agriculture is to be preferred. But wherever climate, soil and condition of settlement do not admit of plantation culture, and a native population capable of production is present, the Government will, as a matter of course, encourage native agriculture as much as possible, and by this means create an improved economic position.”