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Journal of the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia, Series 3

Keywords

Southern Africa, Conferences, Agriculture.

First Page Number

69

Last Page Number

98

ISSN

0021-8618

Abstract

Southern Rhodesia covers 96 million acres and has about 5,000 European farmers. & The value of their produce in 1953-54 was £A42,400,000.* Tobacco (57.7 per cent.), maize (15.1 per cent.), cattle for slaughter (11.3 per cent.), and dairy produce (3.8 per cent.), are the major items.

Across the Zambesi River from Southern Rhodesia lies Northern Rhodesia, 850 miles long and 450 miles across in its widest part (see map Plate 3). It has a narrow waist about 100 miles wide where a tongue of Belgian Congo comes in from the north-west. This locality is the great Copper Belt area of Northern Rhodesia and Belgian Congo, along the watershed of streams draining north to the Congo River and south to the Zambesi.

Beligian Congo occupies the heart of Africa and embraces much of the basin of the mighty Congo River. Yet it may come as a surprise to know that it is nearly as large as Western Australia, and thus equals about one third of Australia or the United States of America. It extends 350 miles north of the Equator and 900 miles south (see map Plate 4). From its small Atlantic seaboard at the mouth of the Congo, it goes east nearly 1,300 miles to Lake Tanganyika. The annual flow of the Congo River is about twice that of the Mississippi, and is exceeded only by the Amazon.

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