ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION Field of enquiry This essay discusses master farmers growing rice or vegetables as principal crops. Specialization in vegetable-growing is largely the concern of immigrants, while indigenous farmers, that is people whose ancestors settled in the area generations (sometimes centuries) ago, still specialize mainly in rice production. Rice was formerly the traditional crop of the New Territories, but has declined in importance in the last decade, giving way to market gardening. Increased vegetable production has been carried out mainly on former paddy land. The encouragement to change in farming patterns has been provided by the growth of the urban areas since the war, and has been almost entirely due to efforts of immigrants from the vegetablespecializing areas of Kwangtung province. The first large influx of these farmers was about 1937 when the Japanese invaded South China. Since the establishment of the present regime in China, their numbers have increased so considerably that on census day in 1961, indigenous people were in the majority in only one district.
