In German Cameroons rubber planting is being pushed forward mainly with the Funtumia and Hevea varieties. In Portuguese West Africa hopes are centred upon Manihot and Funtumia.
The best that can be said of the rubber cultivation in West Africa is that it has not yet passed the experimental stage, and that there is some promise of success in the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria.
RUBBER COMPETITION
There is, however, one other factor which must not be overlooked, Mr. Herbert Wright pointed out last year that cultivated plantation rubber would soon be arriving in quantities which would cause embarrassment to the rubber merchants. It is certain that when this happens prices are bound to fall, perhaps dramatically. The question for the West African rubber planting community to ask is: can they, when prices fall, compete with the West and East Indies, where labour is plentiful and cheap, and where there is practically no costly land transport. A merchant from the Straits Settlements once informed me that West African rubber producers must be prepared to compete with the East—at 9d. per pound. If that prediction should be justified by future events then West Africa will be wise to concentrate upon its trusty friends the Oil Palm and Cocoa Tree.
III
THE PRODUCTION OF COCOA
Cocoa to most individuals is suggestive of carefully and tastefully packed tins, or in chocolate form, of delightful little packages done up in neat silver paper and prettily tied with bows of silk ribbon. To others it means a welcome and fragrant breakfast or supper beverage. To few, indeed, does it represent anything else. The man in the street, if he thinks at all upon investing his savings in cocoa, argues that after all there is a limit to human digestion, particularly where sweetmeats are concerned, consequently he need not trouble himself about “futures” in cocoa for the field is at best a restricted one. It never occurs to him that the demand for every species of vegetable oil and fat is becoming more clamant every day. Somehow he never asks himself why Bournville, York and Bristol cocoa is 2s. 6d. per pound, and Dutch only 1s. per pound. He presumes, and if he tries it he knows, that one quality is better than the other, but it does not occur to him that there is something in the one beverage which is lacking in the other. The butter from the latter—the pure fat too expensive to eat, but not too expensive to incorporate in pomades for personal adornment, has been extracted. There is no more rigid limit to the demand for cocoa than to the demand for rubber; not only so, but nothing has yet appeared even on the horizon of our imagination that can take the place occupied to-day by the cocoa bean, both for internal and external consumption. This cannot be said with regard to rubber, wool or silk.
COCOA ON SAN THOMÉ. TERMITE TRACK VISIBLE ON THE TRUNK OF THE TREE.
COCOA IN CULTIVATION