Our Disappearing Grains

The rise and fall of local non-rice grains is only partly related to the two food crises after World War II. It is also to do with how the government has responded to the challenges of trade liberalization.

Taiwan's first post-war food crisis occurred in 1949 when the KMT government retreated to Taiwan. At that time, about 1.5 million soldiers and refugees from mainland China moved into Taiwan. People were reliant to a large extent on wheat imported as US aid to help the nation through the crisis. Even nowadays middle-aged Taiwanese will remember how their underwear was often made from recycled "Sino-US Cooperation" flour bags.

Then in the 1950s, after the political situation stabilized, the government started encouraging farmers, through farmers' associations, to expand cultivation of various grains in autumn and winter. By the early 1960s, non-rice grain cultivation was flourishing, with 60,000 hectares devoted to soybeans and 25,000 hectares to wheat. (At that time over 700,000 hectares were under rice.)

During the 60s, Taiwan's post-war baby boom created the second wave of pressure on food supplies, so in 1964 the government began to import wheat from the US, resulting in the gradual destruction of local wheat growers.

In the 70s, Taiwan's economy took off, and the government imported large quantities of corn, wheat and soybeans from the US in order to balance the Taiwan-US trade deficit. Around this time, cheap imported feed became an incentive for the development of a large-scale livestock industry; people were beginning to eat more meat and their dietary habits gradually became more Westernized.

It is worth emphasizing that in this era of export-oriented manufacturing, the rural population started leaving the land in numbers, leading to government protection for farmers. To avoid farmland being abandoned, the government adopted an approach of guaranteeing crop prices to encourage rice growers to convert to corn or soybeans.

The local wheat-growing story is rather special. After 1975, because liquors produced by the Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau, such as sorghum spirit (gaoliang) or fermented grain wines (huangjiu), were enjoying a booming export market, many farmers grew wheat (the raw material for liquor yeast) under contracts with the bureau, with wheat cultivation reaching a peak of 1,402 hectares. From 1995, however, when the bureau began to reduce liquor production, farmers gradually converted to other crops. Only Kinmen still has contracts with farmers growing wheat around the areas of Daya, Tai-chung County and Xuejia, Tainan County (after sprouting, the seedlings are then moved to grow to maturity in Kinmen). Thus only small areas remain under wheat cultivation.

After Taiwan joined the WTO in 2002, the government policy of guarantees was suspended, but wasn't replaced with any other measure to assist rural production. In fact, farmers began receiving subsidies for maintaining unused land. The final result was the almost entire abandonment of local non-rice grain production.