STATE AIDED RURAL LAND COLONIZATION IN MALAYA: AN APPRAISAL OF THE F.L.D.A. PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

State-sponsored settlement programs are a vital facet of recent rural land-use trends in many tropical territories. This study of the work of the Federal Land Development Authority, Malaya, is an attempt at providing an example of such developments. By the end of 1964, F.L.D.A. had initiated sixty-one projects designed to ultimately benefit over 20,000 peasant families. It is anticipated that the new settlements will provide a nucleus of peasant landowners with encouraging cash incomes from individual high grade rubber or oil palm holdings of about eight acres each. This vast undertaking poses numerous questions of detail relating to physical problems of tropical land development, the mechanics of commercial tree crop culture, the response of the settlers to new patterns of living, and overall economic and sociopolitical implications. These considerations leave room for analysis and debate, not only in terms of the Malayan setting but with reference to projects of a like nature in other newly emergent states in the tropics.