Artificial insemination of pigs, based on its highly successful use in Japan, has become increasingly important in Hong Kong, with more than 1,000 instances of its use in 1961.
In the northwestern lowlands near Yuen Long, the department has developed a fast-growing source of food in the fish-raising ponds. From the top of a small hill, Yu Yat-sum, fisheries officer, is able to point to a speckled, silvery expanse of such ponds, covering 700 acres in individual ponds from one to 10 acres each. Each acre produces about a ton of fish every year.
Mr. Yu explains that a five-acre pond, equipped with sluice gates and surrounded by dirt embankments, could be built for $2,700. Usually they are owned by a village or a co-op society. They are only five feet deep, but packed with 3,000 to 3,600 fry an acre, each about the length of a paper clip. The fish would all be crushed and battered if it were not for their superior adaptation—big head and silver carp cruise near the surface, grass carp favor the mid-levels, and grey mullet and mud carp gravitate to the bottom. Fed on rice bran, dry peanut cakes and soya bean meal, they fatten at a prodigious rate and are ready for the market within a year, selling at 21 to 30 cents a pound. For the pond owners, it’s a net return of twenty percent per year. There are more than 1,000 acres of these ponds in the New Territories, and they are increasing at the rate of 60 acres a month.
The Chinese have their own strict ideas of what fresh fish means; to them, the only fresh fish from a pond is a live one, so the carp and mullet travel to market in tubs, still alive. The job of Mr. Yu and other departmental experts is to see that the fish do not perish before their time because of diseases or excessive salinity in the pond water.
The Tai Lung Forestry and Crop Experimental Station concentrates on the expansion of the colony’s forests, which almost disappeared during World War II. Here the six-inch seedlings of Chinese pine, eucalyptus, China fir and other species are placed in polythene tubes and covered with soil by patient Hakka women who do the work by hand. After a few months in the shade and a brief maturing period in full sunlight, the polythene tube is removed and the tree is planted on a hillside in one of the reservoir catchment areas. Spaced about six feet apart on all sides, they go in at the rate of 2,500 an acre. Tai Lung produces 1,500,000 of these plantings each year. A month after they are placed on the hillsides, their progress is checked by an inspector; if more than twenty percent have died, the area is replanted. A second check is made a year later.