Edward Hewitt Nichols

Edward Hewitt Nichols CBE JP, (, 29 December 1925 – 29 January 2016) was a British colonial agriculture and aquaculture official. Having served in Sierra Leone, he then worked in Hong Kong, where, from December 1965 to January 1980, he was the director of the territory's Agriculture and Fisheries Department. From October 1976 to January 1980, he was a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. He was a major proponent of country parks in Hong Kong. He was also a regulator, and promoter, of cooperatives and credit unions.

Nichols graduated from Newcastle University, Queens' College, and the University of the West Indies, majoring in agriculture. In 1947, he joined the Colonial Office. He was sent to Sierra Leone and became director of agriculture there. Later, he was promoted to senior director in 1954 and head director in 1957. He mainly researched rice plantation. He participated in the production of Zoo Quest.

In 1959, Nichols went to Hong Kong to become the assistant director of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department. In December 1965, he replaced Jack Cater as the director. During his term, the agriculture and aquaculture industry was negatively affected by urbanisation and to address this, he actively promoted agriculture mechanisation and provided incentives to the industry to sustain production. To satisfy high demand of fish, he encouraged and supported Hong Kong fishermen to expand their operations and promoted replacing wind-powered ships with mechanised ones to increase efficiency. The gross domestic product of the industry increased from million HKD to billion HKD across his term.

In the early 1970s, Nichols called for awareness of importance of nature conservation, warning Hong Kong people not to "only care about short-term economic benefits while ignoring that we will be criticised in the future" . His father was Edward E. Nichols and his mother was Mary Hewitt. He was educated in Newcastle University and later in Durham University in October 1924. He majored in agriculture. In 1951, he participated in the production of Zoo Quest. He mainly managed agricultural affairs. He participated in several international agriculture meetings. They include attending the Food and Agriculture Organization Rice Committee meeting twice respectively representing the Hong Kong government in Sri Lanka in December 1959 and the British government in Manila in December 1964; In July 1965, he went to London to attend the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux review meeting, representing Hong Kong and other territories. Meanwhile, the production costs of agriculture and aquaculture rose while profits diminished. The 1970s energy crisis and competition from imports from Mainland China and other places also negatively impacted the industry. The surrounding of Fanling Lodge has a lot of arable land. (1973) The seas of Hong Kong were filled with wind-powered fishing boats. (1965) Nichols thought the agriculture and aquaculture industries were not completely self-sustaining, but had a certain importance. Therefore, he proposed using discreet policies to support the industry. He also emphasised agriculture mechanisation. Through the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Loan Fund and J.E. Joseph Trust Fund, he provided loans to farmers to increase productivity and efficiency. He also held vocational training classes to improve production means. In cooperation with the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association, the Agriculture and Fisheries Department also distributed equipment such as pesticides to increase production.

Meanwhile, as urban areas developed, Nichols oversaw the decline of rice planting in Hong Kong. The area of rice fields had decreased from hectares in 1965 to hectares in 1975 and hectares in 1978. In the late 1970s, the rice industry almost disappeared. Jasmine rice farming was gone by the 1980s. To help farmers switch jobs, he encouraged them to farm vegetables and pigs. Before he became director, he had already established Operation Feedbag in cooperation with Care USA to provide interest-free loans to local pig farmers. Apart from promoting mechanisation, he co-organised farming exhibitions to promote local farm produce to improve farming infrastructure. Examples include spending HKD on an irrigation plan in Pat Heung, setting up -feet-long water pipes starting from Ho Pui Reservoir connecting Ho Pui, Ma On Kong, Tai Wo, Tai Kek, Cheung Po, and other areas in order to irrigate square metres of farmland, providing a stable irrigation water supply for vegetable farmers in Pat Heung.

The demand for fish was traditionally high for Hong Kong people. To satisfy fish demand, Nichols encouraged development of the aquaculture industry. He also encouraged Hong Kong people to consume mesopelagic fish and fish from foreign waters to supplement the deficit in demersal fish and fish from local waters. In particular, due to technical and knowledge restrictions, although the South China Sea had many mesopelagic fish, they were rarely exploited. Apart from providing loans to fishermen, he also subsidised the large-scale replacement of traditional fishing boats with motorised ones in conjunction with the plan of exploiting mesopelagic fish.

During Nichols' -year term as the director of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department from 1965 to 1980, the population of Hong Kong increased from million to million. In the same period, the working population increased from million to million, but those in the aquaculture industry decreased from thousand to thousand, and the percentage relative to the working population decreased from % to %. The GDP percentage of the local aquaculture industry decreased from % to %, the GDP increasing from million HKD in 1965 to billion HKD in 1980. In the same period, vegetable production annually increased from thousand metric tons to thousand metric tons, though the market share decreased slightly from % to %.

In other areas, the local agriculture and aquaculture significantly developed. From 1965 to 1980, the Hong Kong government's aquaculture and agriculture funds increased respectively from million HKD and million HKD to million HKD and million HKD. The modern cooperative movement began in the United Kingdom in 1844, and was introduced into Hong Kong via Jack Cater, the first registrar of cooperatives. The goal of cooperatives was to run businesses together in a fair way, compensating individual weaknesses via working together and unleashing the potential of groups to increase production efficiency. Until 1979, Hong Kong had over cooperatives with employed. Over of them were urban cooperatives and of them were agriculture and aquaculture cooperatives that provided customisable house building, savings, and other welfare services. Over of them were agriculture and aquaculture cooperatives,

Nichols also oversaw the rise of credit unions in Hong Kong. The modern credit union movement started in 1852. Its operational mode is similar to cooperatives, and is different from rotating savings and credit associations. Credit union is a non-profit organisation where members voluntarily and fairly, with mutual assistance in mind, encourage other members to cultivate habits of thrifting and saving. As the credit union movement developed quickly, eight credit unions in Hong Kong established the Credit Union League of Hong Kong to further promote the movement. From the early 1960s, the Agriculture and Fisheries Department started researching the conservation of wild areas in Hong Kong. In 1965, the department invited L. M. Talbot and his wife to conduct a survey. In the same year, they submitted Conservation of the Hong Kong Countryside, setting a foundation for the later country park policies of the Hong Kong government. In March 1967, David Trench, the then Governor of Hong Kong, established the Provisional Council for the Use and Conservation of the Countryside, which published a report named The Countryside and the People in 1968, further reviewing the need of natural recreation and conservation. In response to the report, the government established two consultation committees respectively responsible for the development of natural recreation and a five-year natural conservation plan. The government also used the Sir David Trench Fund to set up a small country park by the Shing Mun Reservoir as an experiment. The country park policies gradually came into existence.

Early logo of Hong Kong country parks in Plover Cove Country Park, before the addition of the lower waves representing oceans. Nichols was very supportive of the conservation of rural areas in Hong Kong. He had served as the chairperson of the Natural Conservation Working Group of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department. In the early 1970s, Nichols called for awareness of the importance of nature conservation, warning Hong Kong people not to "only care about short-term economic benefits while ignoring that we will be criticised in the future" . Within his term, he pointed out many times that half of the Hong Kong population were teenagers under the age of , with four million citizens living in a -square-kilometre urban area; expanding country parks could help teenagers and citizens unwind and, in the long term, relieve social discontent caused by the 1967 Hong Kong riots. In 1971, after Murray MacLehose had become Governor of Hong Kong, country parks in Hong Kong were significantly developed. Under MacLehose's lead, in August 1976, the Hong Kong government legislated the Country Parks Ordinance and officially established the Country and Marine Parks Authority and the Country and Marine Parks Board, responsible for designating and managing country parks. Nichols became the first supervisor of the former and first chairperson of the latter. In 1978, the Hong Kong government spent million HKD on the running costs of key country parks in the next four years. In the first year, over million visits were recorded. In 1980, there were country parks, occupying % of square kilometre of land in Hong Kong. Under the protection of the Country Park Ordinance, areas in country parks cannot be exploited at will, important in protecting Hong Kong's natural environment. Initially, there was criticism of insufficient promotion and lack of basic infrastructure in country parks. As a result, Nichols actively promoted visiting the country parks to citizens and built features like tourist centres, reporting centres, public toilets, rain shelters, road signs, camps, barbeque grills, and recreational equipment, making country parks in Hong Kong better developed. He designated many country parks in several years and built a complete country park system. When Nichols stepped down, MacLehose praised him for being "a preserver of Hong Kong's countryside, and an organiser of recreation in it" . He was also the chairperson of Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Loan Fund Committee, trustee of the J.E. Joseph Trust Fund, member of the Hong Kong Agricultural Development Association, director of the Hong Kong Productivity Council, chairperson of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Agriculture Research Group Advisory Committee, member of the Urban Council Museum and Arts (Natural History) Affairs Committee, and member of the New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association Advisory Committee. In November 1966, he attended a management conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, representing the Hong Kong government. In April 1969, he attended an Asian Development Bank regional agriculture policy research conference in Sydney and the 13th International Commission on Irrigation & Drainage meeting in Mexico City. In October 1974, he attended the Indo-Pacific Fish Conference in Jakarta. From 1962 to 1980, Hong Kong fishermen saved more than 1,800 people, many of whom were Vietnamese boat people. Major changes included reorganising the department to compose the head office, agricultural division, and aquaculture division; and creating the natural conservation and country park division, responsible for country park affairs. At the same time, the department moved locations many times in conjunction with expansion of the department. In 1964, the head office and the agricultural and forestry division were in the North Kowloon Magistracy, while the aquaculture and veterinary divisions were in the Li Po Chun Chambers.

Later life In January 1980, Nichols, aged , stepped down as the director of the Agricultural and Fisheries Department to prepare for retirement. John Morrison Riddell-Swan, the then deputy director, succeeded him as the director. Nichols had worked in colonial roles for years, with years spent in Hong Kong. To affirm his work in aquaculture and natural conservation, the United Kingdom awarded him the honour of OBE in 1972 and CBE in 1980. He was also awarded the Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II in 1977. He was hired as an advisor of the Food and Agriculture Organization. In 1981, he was responsible for researching technical cooperation in aquaculture in developing countries. Later, he reviewed the long-term finance of the Bay of Bengal Programme. The project was organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. Its goal was to develop aquaculture in countries in the Bay of Bengal such as Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

On 29 January 2016, Nichols died in Northumberland, aged 90. His body was cremated in Newcastle upon Tyne on 15 February 2016.

Nichols was a member of the Council for British Archaeology, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, and Northumberland Wildlife Trust. While in Hong Kong, he was a member of the Hong Kong Golf Club, Hong Kong Jockey Club, and Ladies Recreation Club, Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, and Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association.

Honours

The following lists the full names and abbreviations of his honours: Justice of the peace (J.P.) (10 August 1966) Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) (1972 Birthday Honours) Silver Jubilee of Elizabeth II (1977) Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) (1980 Birthday Honours)