The Journey of Rice (Part 1): Dissecting a Wooden Rice Mill
Editor's note: An Qi, a graduate of Taipei National University of the Arts, is also a member of the "Beautiful Farmers Group" of the Taiwan Rural Front, using her professional training to help promote rural culture and raise awareness of agricultural issues. In early summer, An Qi and her companions came across a news story about an elderly farmer wanting to sell an old-style hinoki cypress rice mill. It sparked everyone's curiosity about this industry, and they also made a field trip to Tainan, where the rice mill is located, to find out more.
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Before the Article Begins
Before the main text begins, I would like to explain the origins of this article. At the end of last year, because I was working with my Taiwan Rural Front partner Xiao Ba on the packaging for "Kai Rice," I unexpectedly came into contact with the back-end processing chain of agriculture, and this experience taught me that finding processing channels (milling and packaging) for even a small amount of rice is difficult today. That was one starting point. Finally, because many young farming friends have begun rolling up their sleeves and pant legs to farm in earnest, we also started considering the question of how to handle the rice harvested afterward. That was another reason.
Then, not long ago, my companions and I came across a news story about a rice mill in Tainan that wanted to sell an old-style hinoki cypress rice mill. Because of the points above, as soon as we saw this news story, we tried to investigate: Just how does the rice mill inside the rumored "rice mill" operate? What exactly does the machine in the news story look like? And what exactly are the reasons that caused this industry to decline?
Since the idea had taken hold, we set off without hesitation.
The Intricate Rice Mill
In the past, traditional rice mills in Taiwan were called "earthen hulling rooms," and "earthen hulling" referred to the stone mortar used to hull rice. After agricultural machinery was introduced during the Japanese colonial period, the main subject we are introducing in this article began to appear: the wooden rice mill. Traditional old-style wooden rice mills mostly used small motors for traction power. The three rice mills we visited - "Yichang" in Houbi, and "Sihe" and "Qieba" in Shanhua - all had 5-horsepower motors (compared with today's automated motors, which are often 20 horsepower or more), and this motor drove a belt that operated the entire machine. The hulling drum machine, the refining machine and several blowers all ran on this power.
Below, we will first take the "Yichang" rice mill in Houbi as an example to briefly introduce the traditional rice-milling process and the structure of each part of the machinery.
Left image: After the milled white rice comes out from the back end of the machine and is bagged, it can be weighed directly on the scale and then brought out for sale.
Right image: Rice bran milled by the Sihe Rice Mill, which was still operating when we visited. It looks just like roasted flour.
In the past, the business model of a "rice mill" was to buy paddy rice from farmers after the rice harvest and mill it, mostly from farmers within the village, and almost every village had its own "rice mill." The early rice-milling industry could be said to be regional; after all, in the past, when transportation and logistics were undeveloped, the distance over which paddy rice could be sent for processing was limited. Of this purchased paddy rice, one portion was milled into brown rice and then sold directly to middlemen, who then wholesaled it to retail rice shops set up in the city (most of which were equipped only with refining machines), and the retailers refined it themselves before selling it.
For another portion, as in the case of the industrial zone later established near Shanhua, the "rice mill" would also sell rice to nearby factories. According to Uncle Zeng of "Qieba," they used to supply, for example, the employee cafeteria of the "Kagome" factory, where the amount of rice consumed for large-scale meals was astonishing, but later the factory gradually abolished its kitchen and switched to ordering boxed lunches, so that business also ended. The last portion was sold by the "rice mill" itself after refining the rice through the final process, and occasionally they also took on milling jobs for rice that farmers kept for their own household consumption.
This business model could still be considered a golden age until about twenty years ago. Uncle Zeng of "Qieba" said that because the rice mill's business was so good that they could not keep up, in the 78th year of the Republic of China (1989) he simply took early retirement from the credit department of the farmers' association and devoted himself to running the "rice mill" at home, and the workers he hired at the time still had to work in shifts during the busy harvest season.
(Series to be continued)
Next in the series: The Journey of a Grain of Rice (Part 2): The Delicious Relationship of the Earthen Hulling Room