Land Utilization in Southeastern Asia

AGAIN AND AGAIN during the more than 20 years which the present reviewer spent in the Southeastern Asian-Indo-Malaysian region on agricultural problems, particularly on soil and land-use questions, there was apparent the pressing need for more knowledge about lines of research and progress in agricultural sciences in neighboring countries. Publications there were, but they left much to be desired; not only are different languages used by several of the countries, but the connotation of similar words differs in different countries. And all too often local vernacular expressions, weights and measures are used without clear indication of their meaning or value in units familiar to the reader. Pelzer is guilty of this. Prior to Pearl Harbor there was an almost complete lack of opportunity for first-hand study of agricultural conditions in neighboring countries of Southeastern Asia. For scientific staffs official trips were seldom permitted across international boundaries, while it was expected that leave would be taken in the country where the scientist was trained, where his children were likely in school, and where he looked for professional stimulus. For example, the agricultural scientists in the Philippines looked to the United States; those of the Netherlands Indies to Holland; those of Malaya and Burma to Britain and the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad; and those of French IndoChina to France. Dean C. F. Baker, of the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines, long worked for a truly international and adequately equipped scientific research center in the Indo-Malaysian region, where visiting scientists from many countries could work together on problems of mutual interest in the biological, and particularly the agricultural, sciences. Outside support by an internationally-minded organization was just the sort needed to give Pelzer a chance to study at first hand and make valuable and very much-needed comparisons of land utilization and agricultural colonization in many, if not all, of the different regions of the Asiatic tropics. Unfortunately the war in Europe intensified certain difficulties of the author so that

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