At Ta Kwu Ling Dryland Experimental Station, the problem is how to get some use out of the thousands of acres of former farmland abandoned because of poor soil or insufficient water. The station, started in 1956, made little progress at first. Then it added compost of manures and chemical fertilizers to the soil, and tried deep plowing to retain moisture in the earth. Large white local radishes as big as yams did well in this ground, and so did sweet potatoes. The department experts found that windbreaks of sugar cane helped to offset the drying effects of strong winds. Several types of fodder, including six varieties of grasses, were tried out in sample patches. Five of the station’s eleven acres are devoted to improvement of local pig breeds by crossing them with exotic strains. The Castle Peak Livestock Experimental Station, located in an area of badly eroded hills, is the chief center for artificial insemination of pigs. Semen from selected strains of Berkshire, middle white, and large white and improved local boars is injected into local sows, producing larger and hardier litters. Various breeds of chickens are crossed to develop poultry which thrive under local conditions and are acceptable to Chinese tastes. A complete laboratory treats and experiments with every known disease of poultry, pigs and cattle. Pig semen is carried by bicycle, truck and helicopter to outlying sections of the New Territories to service local sows. 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.