Published in June 1948 by 
 BRITISH INFORMATION SERVICES 
 An Agency of the British Government 
 
 T< 
 
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 -X 
 
 This material is filed with the Department of Justice, where the required 
 registration statement of B. I. S. under 56 Stat. 248-258 as an agency of 
 the British Government is available for inspection. Registration does not 
 imply approval or disapproval of this material by 
 the United States Government. 
 
 Printed in U. S. A. 
 
 495 
 
jV<d ^eiMwdk 
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 BRITAIN S GREAT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT 
 
 IN EAST AFRICA 
 
 ■ms 
 
 BRITISH INFORMATION SERVICES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
African trainee 
 
 i 
 
1. INTRODUCTION [P.5 
 
 2. THE LAND CHOSEN [P.6 
 
 3. HOW GOES THE BATTLE? [P.g 
 
 4. WORLD PEANUT PRODUCERS [P.17 
 
 5. DESCRIPTION AND USES [P.18 
 
 6. HISTORY OF THE SCHEME [P.20 
 
 7. THE FACTORS [P.22 
 
 8. BRITAIN’S COLONIAL POLICY [P.26 
 
Arrayed for battle: bulldozers in the Kongwa area vehicle park 
 
 
 L 
 
battle has begun in Tanganyika 
 Territory in East Africa that is expected to spread over thousands of square 
 miles of that land and to affect the lives of East Africans, residents of Great 
 Britain, and eventually the whole world. Modified tanks, bulldozers, and 
 other implements of war are on the field, battle lines have been laid down, 
 and the first 10,000 of the peak army of 100,000 are now assembled and 
 engaged in combat. 
 
 The enemy is nature, in the form of wild, uncultivated soil covered with 
 stubborn bush; insect life, that has driven away men and cattle; and climate, 
 which has bred inhabitants who have made few gains in their own battles 
 against nature. 
 
 When the enemy is tamed and brought to work for man instead of 
 against him, East Africa will have a series of vast mechanized peanut farms 
 of some three and one-quarter million acres (over 5,000 square miles) and 
 the world will have an extra three-quarter million tons of peanuts yearly to 
 help fill the great gap between the present world supply and demand for 
 edible fats and oils. This will mean more margarine, cooking oil, and salad 
 oil for hungry people; more soap; and added meal for cattle, now particularly 
 short in Great Britain. Even more important, the countries of East Africa, 
 now relatively undeveloped and isolated from the rest of the world, will be 
 
NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 6] 
 
 better equipped to help Western Europe get on its feet economically and 
 themselves acquire the economic basis of future self-government. 
 
 The peanut scheme resembles military warfare in many ways: it is daring, 
 success will be difficult, and the effects are likely to be breath-taking. But 
 unlike other battles, it attempts to build up and create instead of tearing 
 down and destroying. 
 
 In terms of size, it will form out of desolate, mainly uninhabited land, 
 a series of farms larger than the acreage of peanuts picked and threshed in 
 the whole of the United States in 1947. In terms of money, the British 
 Treasury, i.e., the British taxpayer, is likely to spend considerably more than 
 the original estimate of £25,500,000 ($102,000,000) over a period of six years, 
 though in the long run the business will more than pay for itself. In terms of 
 extra supplies of fats and oils, it is expected that each person in Britain (who 
 now receives eight ounces of fats weekly under a strictly rationed system) will, 
 when the peanut farms are in full swing, get 35 per cent more fats than at 
 present. In terms of benefits to the Africans, the hopes are that their hoe and 
 ox economy will be transformed into large-scale, mechanized farming; that 
 their increased income will make possible higher standards of living and better 
 social services; and that eventually, through education and training, they will 
 be able to assume control of the undertaking themselves. 
 
 The difficulty of winning this great battle can best be understood by 
 inspecting the battleground and the inhabitants of the country who will 
 furnish most of the army. 
 
 The field is Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia, whose total areas are 
 somewhat larger than those of Texas, California, Nevada, and Utah com¬ 
 bined. Ninety-seven farm units are already planned there, each unit to equal 
 30,000 acres or about seven square miles. Tanganyika will have four-fifths 
 
Ji/lil 
 
 £S 
 
 f 
 
. . . the enemy is nature 
 
 of the whole area, and Northern Rhodesia the rest, though further sections 
 in both of these countries, as well as a few in Kenya, may be chosen. 
 
 A visitor today finds the greatest activity in the vicinity of Kongwa, 
 in the Central Province of Tanganyika, where the first area was chosen 
 for development. This 15-unit plot is 240 miles from the east coast port of 
 Dar-es-Salaam and sixteen miles north of the main line of the central 
 Tanganyika railway. While the countryside is generally flat, there are a 
 number of hills rising to 5,000 feet, with the Kiboriani Range in the south¬ 
 east. The plains are thickly covered with thorny, often impenetrable bush, 
 possessed of strong, stubborn roots, and the red soil resembles the surface 
 of a hard tennis court, dry and porous, with a tendency to drain quickly. 
 In the dry season the bush is covered with dust, the country burns brown, 
 and whirlwinds of dust, hundreds of feet high, roll over the plains. In the 
 rainy season, the forested sections are colored with flowers, and convolvulus 
 climbing over the baobab and umbrella trees. 
 
 Roads, in the European sense, did not exist in the area before the 
 beginning of the peanut scheme. Kongwa had one, so-called, that was little 
 
NOT JUST PEANUTS [9 
 
 more than a wagon track which usually disappeared with the rush of water 
 down from the hills in the rainy season. 
 
 Kongwa’s native inhabitants are Wagogo, or tribesmen of the Central 
 Province of Tanganyika. They live in squat, flat-roofed huts, mud-walled 
 and thatched and often surrounded by plots of sorghum, millet, and maize. 
 Life for the Mugogo (that is, a man of the Wagogo tribe) and his family 
 has remained almost unchanged from that of his father and grandfather 
 and great-grandfather. For clothes the man wears a loin cloth and cowhide 
 sandals to protect his feet when he goes into the prickly underbrush. His 
 wife winds a yard or so of black cloth around her waist like a skirt, and the 
 small children go naked. Africans working at the hospitals and mission 
 houses usually adopt European dress; men learning to drive the bulldozers 
 and other machines connected with the Kongwa farm may have shirts and 
 shorts, like their European teachers, although many can boast only of burlap 
 bags and blankets with armholes cut into them. 
 
 During the dry season (from early May to mid-November) the Mugogo 
 looks after his few cattle, sometimes searching for pasture land miles away 
 from his home. After the rains he repairs his house, cultivates his small 
 garden of maize and millet, peanuts, sweet potatoes, or beans, with plenty 
 of time left over for leisure and visiting with relatives and neighbors. 
 
 This simple existence is accompanied by primitive social customs, reliance 
 on witch doctors by those who have not gone to school or been in contact 
 with missions and hospitals, and high infant mortality and disease rates. 
 
 What is happening to this land and these people? How goes the battle? 
 
 3£cw ( Goe.i //te GBuft/e? 
 
 “Looking out of my window at Kongwa, I could see a valley that less 
 than twelve months ago carried nothing but wild animals and a few natives 
 grazing cattle. In that short time, regardless of incredible difficulties and 
 disappointments, the whole vista has changed." 
 
io] 
 
 NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 So reported a British farmer on a B.B.C. broadcast one day in the 
 spring of 1948 after a tour of inspection of the Kongwa area. 
 
 First of all, paths are cut through the virgin bush by bulldozers, which 
 eventually carve the area into mile-square patches of thorn, surrounded by 
 a road. Then the thorn is cleared, as well as the baobab trees, which 
 sometimes grow ten feet in diameter, six to ten per acre. Terracing and 
 contouring follow, then plowing and harrowing, planting and fertilizing. 
 
 The British farmer went on: 
 
 “Planting starts with a battery of ten African drivers drawing disc 
 harrows, with a European leader. Six hours a day is their tour of duty- 
 sufficient for anyone in the tropical sun with the dust rising in clouds. Then 
 the combine-planters get on the job. I watched the African drivers at work, 
 and their standard under extremely trying conditions is very high.” 
 
 Since his visit the scene has changed still more, for the first crop was 
 gathered in May, when the yield was taken from 7,500 acres planted in 
 December. The peanuts were plowed out and left on the stalks to dry in 
 the windrows, then threshed by combine. 
 
 Not unexpectedly there were many hitches during the first months, chief 
 of which were (1) shipping the needed heavy tractors and bulldozers to East 
 Africa and thence to Kongwa, and (2) maintaining them once they reached 
 the spot where they were to clear the bush and dig the roots. Since new 
 equipment was not available, the managing agents had bought secondhand 
 machines wherever they could, chiefly on the beaches of the Philippines 
 and Hawaii, where the tractors had already taken part in the Pacific war. 
 
 Once the tractors were at work, they needed considerably more main¬ 
 tenance than new vehicles. To top it all, the extensive, tough and pliable 
 roots of the Kongwa thorns and the many stumps of baobab trees would 
 not yield to the normal rooting machines towed by tractors and it took 
 weeks of experimenting to find a method of dealing with them. 
 
 By early March, 1948, over 400 tractors had arrived in Tanganyika, 
 as well as 200 new Massey Harris tractors from Canada. In fact, the agents 
 have now bought up more equipment than actually can be used immediately, 
 because the surplus war stores could be purchased very cheaply, mostly for 
 less than half their original cost. 
 
 An example of the ingenious utilization of apparently useless vehicles 
 is the adaptation of the Sherman tank, of which many should soon be at work. 
 The Sherman’s armor has been removed, and the reconstructed machine, 
 called the Shervick heavy tractor, has passed rigid tests and proved its value. 
 
Cut scrub is bulldozed to form windbreaks 
 
 Three hundred and fifty of these otherwise useless tanks have been ordered 
 for the later phases of the project. 
 
 A wide range of other kinds of machinery and equipment has been 
 obtained: landing craft and cranes; jeeps and lorries; many kinds of tools; 
 workshops; equipment for engineering the water supply; drugs and surgical 
 stores; surveying materials; tents, huts, furniture, household and sanitary 
 supplies; and building and electrical stores. 
 
 On the basis of the planting of seven small trial plots in January, 1947, 
 the staff estimated that the average yield of hulled nuts over the whole area 
 in 1947 would have been better than 900 lbs. per acre, even though some 
 of the plots were on soils of low fertility. This is a considerable improvement 
 over the estimates made before the work started, when 750 lbs. per acre 
 was assumed to be average. The most fertile of the experimental plots yielded 
 1,580 lbs. per acre. 
 
 Although the cost of equipment has risen during the past year, a 
 substantial increase in the selling price of peanuts has also occurred and is 
 likely to hold for some years. It was originally thought that the peanut oil 
 

 12 ] 
 
 NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 would go for £30 ($120) a ton. Now the price has advanced to nearly 
 £70 ($280). If such conditions obtain when supplies are placed on the 
 market, the financial profit in the venture will have gone up, despite higher 
 production costs. 
 
 One hidden asset not anticipated when the program was planned turns 
 out to be the presence in Tanganyika of hardwood timber suitable for 
 furniture and similar purposes. Sawmill machinery is being shipped to the 
 area, and timber promises to be an important and valuable by-product of 
 the clearing operations. 
 
 Working at Kongwa is proving unexpectedly attractive to the Africans, 
 and there have been instances of men walking as far as 150 miles to join 
 the staff. The labor force has been fairly static, though some of the men, 
 when they accumulate a little money, tend to go away and spend it. It 
 has been a welcome surprise, however, to discover the comparatively high 
 
 A temporary cook-house area: mess tins and a spoon are issued to each man 
 
NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 l>3 
 
 standards of skill and output of the African labor coming from primitive 
 tribes, and with only a few months of training. 
 
 Some immediate, direct effects in the lives of those around Kongwa 
 are already apparent, even though the full program of health, social, and 
 educational development cannot be introduced until the farming stages 
 are reached and the community becomes fairly settled. Medical services now 
 exist in the Kongwa hospital, where there have already been over 20,500 
 attendances by African staff. This first of five such hospitals resembles a 
 base hospital in a theatre of military operations. It has a fully equipped 
 operating theatre, 200 beds, an ex-Royal Army Medical Corps surgeon, 
 and plenty of African patients, for the novelty of hospital services continues 
 to attract the curious as well as the ailing. Thirty-four medical appointments 
 have been made, including doctors, nurses, health visitors, and a 
 radiographer. Some of the 200 Africans chosen as medical auxiliaries and 
 nursing staff have completed their training. 
 
 Each of the ninety-seven units in the project will be provided with a center 
 for housing, medical care, nutrition and welfare, and also most of its staple 
 foodstuffs. After hospitals, on the building list, come cook-houses and stores, 
 and after that, living quarters. 
 
 During the first months at Kongwa, both the European and African 
 staffs lived in tents. When their permanent buildings are completed, one 
 family or three bachelors will occupy each house, placed on a plot of 
 one-third of an acre. The first village is under way. 
 
 A dramatic episode occurred in the autumn of 1947 in the remote 
 area designated for farms in Southern Tanganyika. A severe smallpox 
 epidemic attacked the African population, with a mortality rate of 80 
 per cent of those contracting the disease. Previously only three medical 
 men had served a tremendous area, and so far no doctor had reached this 
 advance post. There was a sanitary inspector, however, of great energy 
 and resolution, who, in a few weeks vaccinated over 11,000 Africans, and 
 broke the course of the epidemic. This is a spectacular example of the im¬ 
 pact of twentieth century medical methods on a primitive culture. 
 
 The Chief Education Officer took up his duties early this year. The 
 system used in the Indian Army during the war, when hundreds of 
 thousands of recruits were rapidly taught English, will be used on the 
 farms in teaching African workers and their families. Britain is also receiving 
 United Nations assistance in developing programs of education and social 
 welfare. UNESCO is going to send a consultant to assist in developing plans, 
 
The first hospital resembles a base hospital in a theatre of 
 
 military operations 
 
 and will, in turn, share in the results of the British experiments, so that the 
 material can be widely used in mass education programs. 
 
 The first demand for training Africans occurred when drivers for tractors 
 and trucks were needed. The school taught 500 Africans to drive clearing 
 tractors and 240 to drive agricultural tractors proficiently in a few months. 
 Only very small proportions failed to qualify. Since 80,000 Tanganyikans 
 had been Askaris (African soldiers) during the war, many on the farms had 
 a head start in mechanical work, although other trainees had to be retaught 
 from the beginning. With increased training facilities, the project will draw 
 on the native population for skilled artisans like carpenters, plumbers, masons, 
 electricians, and fitters. 
 
 In his own farming, the African plows to a depth of four inches, turning 
 up the light soil in a layer that blows and washes away until the farmer 
 is forced to move on and cultivate another plot, in the same fashion. He 
 never uses manures; takes everything from the soil and returns nothing to it. 
 
 Soil conservation is of prime importance to those responsible for the 
 
NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 [15 
 
 peanut farms. The research and control unit is conducting experiments 
 on the spot into the best methods of crop rotation, soil fertilization, depth 
 plowing, spacing, and time of planting. For some months a Chief 
 Scientific Officer, chemist, soil chemist, agronomist, entomologist, and 
 geologist have been at work. Careful planning to prevent soil erosion already 
 shows results. The whole cleared area has been terraced and contoured at 
 intervals of nine feet, and cut scrub has been bulldozed to horizontal lines 
 nine feet apart to form windbreaks and prevent water run-off. 
 
 Seeing these methods of soil conservation, the Africans are, in the 
 words of a recent British visitor, “beginning to understand this erosion 
 problem/’ 
 
 New roads and railways are linking up parts of Tanganyika where 
 wagon lanes or no paths at all have run before. The new 16-mile branch 
 railroad to Kongwa from Msagali on the Central Tanganyika Line was 
 the first necessity, and is completed. Work has begun in the Southern 
 Province on building a port with deep-water berths at Mikindani south 
 of Lindi, and on the 120-mile railway connecting Mikindani with the area 
 to be developed in Southern Tanganyika. The first berth at the fine natural 
 harbor at Mikindani should be completed by the end of this year, and 
 the new port will probably be usable by September, 1949. This will remove 
 some of the heavy burden now borne by Dar-es-Salaam, where for lack 
 of proper wharves all the transport must be done by lighters. The new 
 railway is going to help open up the Tunduru hinterland, an area of 
 tremendous potential economic value. 
 
 Extending the work to Southern and Western Tanganyika, where 
 clearing work has begun, will lessen the danger of setbacks caused by 
 drought in any one area. 
 
 In this first “experimental year,” as Mr. John Strachey, Minister of 
 Food, has called it, a great deal of experience has been gained in a field 
 where there had been no pilot work for production on such a vast mechanized 
 scale. It has not been an easy job for the Europeans or the Africans at 
 Kongwa, particularly the former, who find the climate enervating and the 
 living conditions primitive. However, their spirit of enthusiasm and 
 determination remain high, and visitors all agree that the men on the job 
 have worked wonders. Imaginations have also been fired in London where 
 more than 100,000 men and women have applied for jobs on the project. 
 
 A Member of Parliament who has been to Kongwa reported to the 
 House of Commons: “Anybody who has been there could not fail . . . 
 
i6] 
 
 NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 to pay some personal tribute to the very great work which has been done 
 by the men and women who have been responsible for putting this great 
 idea into execution. There is nothing more remarkable, in looking on this 
 vast virgin forest which has so long defied the efforts of human beings 
 to conquer, than the fact that this gallant little band — and it is still, 
 both black and white, a little band — has made such progress as they have, 
 in the matter of a few months, in taming these great forces of nature. 
 They really deserve the utmost gratitude, both of this Committee and of 
 the nation as a whole.” 
 
 Now how does all this fit in with the world picture? 
 
 Piped water was a great luxury 
 

 To the average consumer of peanut butter, salted peanuts, or peanut 
 candy (the three widest uses in the United States) the food has no great 
 significance beyond its agreeable taste. Few realize, for instance, that 
 peanuts are one of the six basic food crops in the United States, that 
 peanut production in the United States is worth three times that of rye, 
 or that as a cash crop, in the state of Georgia, peanuts are a close runner-up 
 to cotton. 
 
 Nobody was much interested in cultivating peanuts in the United States 
 until the first years of this century when the arrival of the boll weevil 
 from Mexico compelled Southern farmers to turn some of their attention 
 from cotton to peanuts. In 1909, around 550,000 acres of peanuts were 
 picked and threshed. By the middle years of World War II this figure 
 had increased seven times. 
 
 In 1938, the United States was still far from being a leading exporter 
 of peanuts. India, producer of nearly three-quarters of the quantity that 
 entered into world trade, led the list. Senegal, China, Japan, and Nigeria 
 furnished the next largest amounts. The biggest importers were France, 
 Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, countries which processed the 
 nuts and then (except for Germany) were the largest exporters of 
 peanut oil. 
 
 The war brought many changes in production and export patterns. 
 India, the leading pre-war exporter, sent out none in 1946. British East 
 and West Africa (including Nigeria) jumped into first place, followed 
 by French West and Equatorial Africa (including Senegal). China and 
 Japan dropped right out of the picture, leaving the United States in third 
 place, although her exports were not high. The continent of Africa is today 
 supplying most of the world exports of peanuts and peanut oil. 
 
5 ) and 
 
 How many people living north of the Mason and Dixon Line would 
 recognize a peanut plant (Arachis hypogaea) even if the peanuts on it had 
 come to full maturity? The joke is that the nuts could not be seen, for they 
 grow underground and therefore would not give away the plant’s identity. 
 
 The peanut is not actually a nut. Rather it is a pea, belonging to the 
 same family of plants as beans and garden peas, and therefore a vegetable. 
 
 Also called groundnut, earthnut, monkey nut, goober, and manilla 
 nut, it is the fruit of an annual plant which at first glance looks like a 
 robust clover. It grows to the height of one or two feet, and bears small 
 yellow flowers at the joints where the leaves are attached to the stem. After 
 pollination, the flower withers and the flower stalk elongates, forcing its way 
 underground, where the pod develops some distance below the surface. 
 Thus the soil where it is grown must be light enough to allow this process 
 to take place. 
 
 The peanut is one of the most useful vegetables. Aside from being 
 eaten as a fresh vegetable, it is used (outside the United States) primarily 
 in making vegetable oil and oil cake or meal. It is one of the most important 
 of the thirty different trees and plants used commercially for the production 
 of vegetable oil, and produces the highest percentage of oil per acre of all 
 the annual oil seeds. 
 
 From peanut oil, four very important products are made: margarine, 
 cooking oil, salad oil and soap. There are other fatty oils that can be used 
 m making margarine, but peanut oil ranks first in importance after cotton¬ 
 seed oil. As a cooking oil, peanut oil is especially suitable for the deep-fat 
 frying of potato chips or French fries, doughnuts, and croquettes, because 
 it can take so much heat before it begins to smoke and scorch, and food 
 can therefore cook thoroughly yet brown satisfactorily on the outside. 
 
Close-up of lifted peanuts 
 
 In soap-making, too, peanut oil comes second among the fatty oils, 
 being ranked only by palm oil. Britain’s need for all these products is 
 revealed by an inspection of her current rations of fats, meat and soap. 
 A normal adult is entitled to eight ounces of fats weekly (four ounces of 
 butter, three ounces of margarine and one ounce of cooking fat), twenty 
 cents’ worth of butcher’s meat (of which one-sixth must be canned corned 
 meat) and about one-half a medium size cake of hard soap. 
 
 The residue from the peanut kernel contains about 45 per cent protein. 
 This solid residuum, in the form of oil cake or meal, provides excellent 
 cattle food, an item in very short supply in Britain today. Until recently 
 it was believed that cottonseed provided the most valuable oil cake, but 
 there are indications now that peanut meal surpasses it. 
 
 In the United States the entire peanut plant is sometimes fed to animals 
 as hay, though usually it is only the tops of the plants. The shells have 
 been thought to be of small commercial value, but in parts of the United 
 States they have been used for fuel, three tons being about equal to one 
 
NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 20 ] 
 
 ton of coal. In recent years research has also developed a cork substitute 
 from the shells, and commercial development is expected before long. 
 
 This by no means exhausts the potential world uses for peanuts. The 
 American scientist George Washington Carver discovered some 300 uses 
 for the peanut, though unfortunately we do not possess accurate records 
 for reconstructing all of these. From the peanut, Dr. Carver made experi¬ 
 mentally and successfully: cheese, milk, coffee, flour, ink, dyes, wood stains, 
 and insulating board, among hundreds of others. 
 
 The protein product of peanuts is suitable for making textile fibers. 
 The Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. in Britain have developed a 
 wool-like fabric called Ardil, which is now being produced in a pilot factory; 
 this will be in full-scale commercial production within a year. The process uses 
 part of the peanut to make a fine fabric that will not shrink, is impervious to 
 moths, and has unusual strength of fiber. There seems to be no end to the 
 peanut’s potentialities! 
 
 cj 7 f/ie Sfc/ienie 
 
 Although some people think that democratic governments move slowly, 
 the planning of the peanut scheme went ahead with surprising speed. 
 
 It was only a little over two years ago, in the spring of 1946, that the 
 managing director of the United Africa Company, a commercial firm and 
 subsidiary of Unilever Bros. Ltd., proposed to the British Government a 
 plan for peanut farming in East Africa, whereupon a mission was appointed 
 to visit East Africa and investigate possibilities. In June of that year the 
 mission arrived in East Africa. On September 20 they had given their 
 report to the British Government. By early December the Government had 
 determined to undertake the whole project, and by January, 1947, an 
 advance party of the United Africa Company had pitched its tents in 
 Tanganyika and begun work, less than a year after the initial proposal of 
 the project. 
 
PW* 
 
 Africans are being trained in skilled jobs 
 
 Until a public corporation supported by public funds could be established 
 in Britain, the United Africa Company conducted operations, acting 
 as agents for the British Government, and claiming no remuneration for 
 their services. All observers, including Mr. Strachey in the House of 
 Commons, unite in praising them for their courageous and efficient 
 management. 
 
 On April 1, 1948, the United Africa Company handed over responsibility 
 to the Overseas Food Corporation, the new Government-sponsored organi¬ 
 zation established under the Overseas Resources Development Act , 1948. 
 This is the first job for the corporation, whose general duties are to 
 secure the production of food or other agricultural products outside Britain 
 and to arrange for their marketing. It has a borrowing power of £55,000,000 
 ($220,000,000). 
 
 That characteristically British institution, the public corporation, is 
 very like the large private corporation in that it is run on business lines 
 
 J 
 
22] 
 
 NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 and is expected to be self-supporting; but it is Government-sponsored. 
 Before this, public corporations have taken over already developed industries 
 or enterprises. Now they are to initiate production themselves because, 
 according to Mr. Strachey, “the world would not tolerate much longer 
 the leaving fallow of undeveloped areas and because . . . the Colonial 
 people themselves will be the first to benefit from such development.” 
 
 In view of the primitive state of agriculture in East Africa, the low 
 level of economy, and the difficulties of transportation, some observers 
 have wondered that Britain should have decided to promote such a 
 vast scheme of farming. It should by now be clear that the project offered 
 such opportunities for helping to solve certain world problems, not only 
 of food but of a social and economic nature, that the complexities of the 
 African scene could not be allowed to stand in the way of the program. 
 
 Let us examine in detail the factors that dictated the promotion of 
 
 PT/ie &'ac/c / ik 
 
 the plan. 
 
 SHORTAGE OF FATS AND OILS 
 
 Of all food shortages in the post-war world, one of the most acute in 
 Europe is that of fats and oils. In many European countries, consumption 
 in 1946 was less than half that of pre-war. Countries producing fats and 
 oils like India now tend to use more of their own products, and the 
 shortage falls severely on countries who have no domestic or colonial 
 production. 
 
 The situation would not have been so desperate if the decline in the 
 world peanut-oil supplies had been compensated for by a great rise in the 
 production of other edible oils and fats, for, to some extent, certain of 
 the vegetable oils are interchangeable. But this compensation did not 
 occur, and the world need remained critical. 
 
Guided by radar and carrying a survey camera instead of bombs , British 
 Lancasters help to map an uncharted section of East Africa. The Royal 
 Engineers and Royal Air Force have already surveyed 150,000 square 
 miles of new country in Central and East Africa in a project that aims 
 to discover land that can be developed into food growing areas. 
 
 EAST AFRICA’S SUITABILITY FOR 
 GROWING PEANUTS 
 
 East Africa’s tropical regions offer extensive new land and excellent condi¬ 
 tions for peanut farming. The plant needs a growing season of three to 
 five months without frost, much sunshine and high temperatures, 
 moderate rainfall, and a light soil, all of which occur in the areas chosen. 
 Moreover, few people live in these regions because of tsetse fly and poor 
 water supplies. There is therefore no problem of moving families away 
 from their land. The climate in the areas chosen is generally healthy, 
 
2 4 ] 
 
 NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 although in some sections, like Kongwa, precautions must be taken against 
 malaria. Clearing the bush will help to remove the tsetse, and thus eliminate 
 the danger of sleeping sickness for human beings and trypanosomiasis for 
 cattle. 
 
 BENEFITS FOR EAST AFRICA 
 
 The plan can scarcely fail to have the widest effect on East African life. At 
 its most successful, it will bring about a revolution in health, standards of 
 living, methods of work, and philosophy. 
 
 It is not a serene pastoral life that will be revolutionized. It is an 
 existence now threatened in many areas by famine, tsetse fly, disease and 
 ignorance, and too often attended by witch doctors and superstitious 
 tradition. 
 
 Sir Philip Mitchell, Governor of Kenya, who spent more than twenty 
 years in Tanganyika, writes: “Primary production by African peasants is 
 already on the decline. Populations working under that system are going 
 to find it increasingly difficult in supporting themselves at their present 
 level. There have, accordingly, to be found measures to enable the African 
 cultivator in appropriate cases to break away from his economically weak 
 and primitive form of cultivation. Where this cannot be achieved no amount 
 of benevolent assistance for social services can avail to improve the lot of the 
 people. . . .” 
 
 Tanganyika should more than double her exports when the scheme 
 gains full speed, thus increasing the quantity of goods which the country 
 can buy. The revolution in methods of working is expected to spread to other 
 phases of African economy. Only by the widest application of mechanical 
 cultivation is it likely that the country can become rich enough to afford 
 the tremendous public expenditure needed to improve the condition of the 
 mass of African people. 
 
 The mind can scarcely put an end to the possibilities. One obvious 
 consequence will be an increase in stock-farming because of the abundance 
 of good fodder in the peanut plant, the disappearance of tsetse, and the 
 abundant pasturage on the grass leys which will cover roughly half the 
 total acreage of the peanut farms in due rotation. Factories to crush the 
 peanuts and expel the oil will doubtless appear sometime in the future. 
 
 It is not fantastic to think that agricultural progress and the growth 
 of communications will lead to exploration of the mineral wealth of 
 
NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 C 2 5 
 
 East Africa. Coal, lead, copper, phosphates, gold, diamonds, almost all 
 minerals known to men are found in the region, and some day there may 
 be underground development of these resources on a scale as vast as the 
 peanut program in the surface soil. 
 
 Increased capital, millions of acres of new land brought under production, 
 higher standards of living and education, progressive farming methods and 
 skilled workers, new means of communication, new industries and products 
 — all these are a dream only just beginning to materialize. Parts will come 
 true fairly quickly; parts must develop through years of resolution and 
 patience. Authorities see growing out of the plan, which has been described 
 as “the most important single act of Government in the history of British 
 Tropical Africa,” a new era for the East African population. In accordance with 
 British Government policy, Africans employed by the undertaking will 
 be encouraged to take responsibility for running their own welfare services, 
 and later to share in managing the agricultural, commercial, and industrial 
 aspects. The British Government, in outlining the scheme originally, 
 declared their intention of arranging that the undertaking should be trans¬ 
 ferred to the African people at a time and on terms to be agreed in the 
 light of experience of the working of the project. In other words, final 
 
 Cleaning the planting area 
 
26 ] 
 
 NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 control by the people, possibly on a co-operative basis, is dependent on the 
 emergence of skilled and trained African staff. This last scene of the dream 
 may be far off, but it is a not unattainable ideal. 
 
 A third consideration was Britain's policy for her colonies and dependent terri¬ 
 tories. The peanut project fits extremely well with Britain's policy of helping 
 her colonies and dependent territories to develop and improve their condi¬ 
 tions, so that they can achieve economic stability and responsible government 
 as soon as possible. 
 
 This is by no means the first project Britain has undertaken as part of 
 her plan to advance her territories. Under the most recent Colonial Develop¬ 
 ment and Welfare Act the British taxpayers are spending a total of 
 £120,000,000 ($480,000,000) over a period of ten years for the welfare 
 of their overseas dependencies. Another Act, the Overseas Resources De¬ 
 velopment Act , 1948, provided for the establishment of two public corporations 
 to promote overseas development. The smaller of these is the Overseas Food 
 Corporation now in charge of the peanut program. The larger, the Colonial 
 Development Corporation with a total borrowing power of £100,000,000 
 ($400,000,000), has been organized to undertake any kind of development 
 designed to increase the productive capacity of the colonies in trade or other¬ 
 wise. 
 
 RESPONSIBILITIES UNDERTAKEN AT 
 HOT SPRINGS CONFERENCE 
 
 In deciding to carry out the scheme, the British Government was influenced 
 greatly by the resolutions which it, along with forty-three other nations, 
 accepted at the Hot Springs (Virginia) Conference in 1943. The signing 
 nations agreed that they had obligations to their people and to one another 
 
NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 [ 2 7 
 
 “to collaborate in raising levels of nutrition and standards of living of their 
 peoples.” The first step mentioned was “to increase the acreage under crops 
 for direct human consumption.” There were also resolutions about training 
 scientific workers and rural leaders for service in agriculture, about con¬ 
 serving land and water resources, and the development and settlement of land 
 for food production. To attain these goals requires planning and action. 
 By such projects as the peanut farms, Britain is taking the objectives off 
 paper and translating them into reality. 
 
 AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT RELATED TO E.R.P. 
 
 The importance of Africa to the economic recovery of Western Europe 
 grows increasingly evident as the world spotlight continues to be focused 
 on this troubled spot. In fact, the development of Tropical African resources 
 may be vital to the final establishment of a strong and peaceful European 
 continent. 
 
 Ernest Bevin, British Foreign Secretary, linked the two when he was 
 describing his concept of Western Union to the House of Commons last 
 January. He said he was concerned not only with Europe, but also with 
 Europe's overseas territories, naming Africa first of all. These territories 
 have raw material, food, and resources badly needed by Europe and much 
 of the rest of the world. “If we get the plan (E.R.P.),” he summarized, 
 “we intend to develop the economic co-operation between Western European 
 countries step by step, to develop the resources of the territories with which 
 we are associated, to build them up a system of priorities which will produce 
 the quickest, most effective, and most lasting results for the whole world. 
 We hope that other countries with dependent territories will do the same 
 in association with us. 
 
 “We shall thus bring together resources, manpower, organization, and 
 opportunity for millions of people. I would like to depict what it really involves 
 in terms of population whose standard of life can be lifted. We are bringing 
 together these tremendous resources which stretch through Europe, the 
 Middle East and Africa, to the Far East. In no case would it be an exclusive 
 effort. It would be done with the object of making the whole world richer 
 and safer.” 
 
 Sir Stafford Cripps, Chancellor of the Exchequer, believes that the 
 future of the sterling group and its ability to survive depends in part 
 
28] 
 
 NOT JUST PEANUTS 
 
 upon a quick and extensive development of Britain’s African resources. 
 “The further development of African resources/’ he said last autumn, “is 
 of the same crucial importance to the rehabilitation and strengthening of 
 Western Europe as the restoration of European productive power is to the 
 future progress and prosperity of Africa. Each needs and is needed by the 
 other.” By developing the potentialities of Africa, Europe will be not only 
 helping herself to get back on her feet, but assisting Africa to reach out 
 toward stability. 
 
 It is hard to decide where the greatest attraction of the project lies: 
 in the magnitude of its size, its pioneering aspect, its promise of increased 
 supplies of fats and oils, or its tremendous contribution to the social and 
 economic prosperity of African peoples. It is a compound of altruism 
 and realistic business, a means of carrying out world and colonial respon¬ 
 sibilities and, at the same time, providing more food for home consumption. 
 Here is one answer to the question of what Britain is doing to lead her 
 dependent territories to prosperity and eventual self-government, and to 
 help herself and Western Europe along the road to recovery. 
 
 Full details of the peanut project are given in the following British Govern¬ 
 ment documents obtainable from Sales Section, British Information 
 Services, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York 20, N. Y. 
 
 A Plan foi the Mechanized Production of Groundnuts in East and 
 Central Africa (Cmd. 7030). 35 cents. 
 
 East African Groundnuts Scheme; Review of Progress to the End of 
 November , 1947 (Cmd. 7314). 10 cents. 
 
 House of Commons Parliamentary Debates , November 6, 1947, an< ^ 
 March 11, 1948. 20 cents each. 
 

 The first harvest 
 
 1