Into Meinong Tobacco: Summer Cultivation Rural Grassroots Field Survey Series One (3)

Text/ Wu Jialing, Kuo Yenting, Liao Chenya

"A lot of people have switched to growing papaya now, but the investment cost is very high. The trellis alone costs about 500,000, and you can only grow it for three years at a time. I still haven't recovered my costs. I hope I can sell at a good price this year." said Mr. Chen, a farmer in Meinong, adding that if the papayas keep getting soaked, he will lose money again this year.

While doing our tobacco field survey in Meinong, we ran into Mr. Chen working in his field. The weather was very overcast, and the rain we had been worrying about finally came. While sheltering from the rain, we did not forget to hold tight to the fresh papayas and guavas Mr. Chen had just picked for us.

In the heavy rain, we arrived at Mr. Chen's home. After many renovations, his home had become a complex, interlocking maze. What had not changed was the fragrant tobacco shed passed down through three generations of his family's ancestors. The pouring rain did nothing to dampen Mr. Chen's enthusiasm. He was the youngest tobacco farmer the survey team had met over the past several days, and his bold personality made everyone laugh heartily.

The Way of Survival by Changing Crops

Mr. Chen said he has a permit, but now he asks a friend in Linnei to grow tobacco, about four fen of land. When he used to grow tobacco himself, it was about two jia and seven fen, half his own land and half someone else's land.

After the Tobacco and Alcohol Monopoly Bureau was privatized, the area that could be planted kept shrinking. Now he only hopes the government can legislate to improve the problems tobacco farmers face, instead of having to "negotiate" with the government every year over how much tobacco can be grown, because that "negotiation" process is more like a beggar asking for food, not only humiliating but also annoying to the other party.

He stopped growing tobacco only in the past two years, because the area is small and raw material prices keep rising, making the cost not worth it. When he used to grow tobacco, he also grew bananas and other crops at the same time, but those efforts failed. Now that he no longer grows tobacco, he switched to papaya because he already had the skills to grow papaya, and because the area is small, he rarely hires people and does most of the work himself.

But because the investment cost of papaya is too high, from equipment to fertilizer costs about more than 200,000 per fen, and it has kept raining for the past two years, many papayas have died, so he still has not made money.

Mr. Chen stressed that if there were a chance, he would still want to grow tobacco again. Although he now asks a friend to grow it, he will absolutely not sell the right to the permit, because it is family property left from his grandfather's generation. Contract farming life is stable, and if there is profit, of course he would want to do it again. After all, not growing now is not something he controls, and the environment is not something he can control either.

Contract Farming May Be a Way Out

After many days of field surveys, we saw the diversity of farmers' responses to institutional change.

Some still maintain the character of small farmers and insist on holding on to their own land, while others reinvest farmers' income elsewhere, so that agricultural income is no longer used only to maintain household reproduction as in the past. The world is turning, and society is inherently difficult to keep unchanged. Yet when tobacco farmers are forced to face the market after having had a protected life, and must think of many other ways to survive, what lies behind this is the crisis of insufficient protection for farmers in Taiwan's agricultural production and marketing system.

Why is growing tobacco more stable than other crops?

Although, like farmers of other crops, hard cultivation is unavoidable, with the protective layer of a government contract farming agreement protecting agriculture's most fragile link, production and marketing, tobacco farmers do not have to face market fluctuations directly. This is the biggest reason tobacco farmers' lives are more secure. Tobacco farmers are like people working in a public institution: after working hard, they receive the reward they deserve.

In addition, because Taiwan grows autumn tobacco, the period of July and August happens to be the off-season for tobacco farmers, so tobacco farmers can also have a "summer vacation," a period when they can rest. Being able to exchange an expected input of labor and time for equivalent reward is also one of the reasons why the education level in Meinong Township is higher than in other townships.

Because the state implements contract farming with tobacco farmers, tobacco farmers are spared the risk of market price fluctuations, which encourages them to invest more funds each season, and they do not have to worry about working for nothing. The state also provides loan subsidies because they have fixed income.

Because tobacco farmers' reproduction is predictable, it is very different from most farmers who face the market directly. Team member Jialing said she feels this especially deeply because her own family is also engaged in agriculture. She mentioned the story of her father. Jialing said her family had not grown second-crop rice for many years because winter vegetables are more profitable, but there is no free lunch in the world. Where there is sweetness to taste, risk must also accompany it.

As for natural disasters, in winter the northeast monsoon always blows loudly, and from time to time there are typhoons, cold damage, or sudden heavy rain. If that year is very lucky and avoids the troublesome natural disasters, it is often still hard to avoid human-made disasters. For example, last year (2009), her family chose cauliflower as that year's winter vegetable. Although it had been more than ten years since the last time they grew cauliflower, perhaps because the family's land had not grown cauliflower for a long time, and relying on her father's many years of vegetable-growing experience, last year was a year of abundant harvest.

However, when the crop harvest was abundant, the price was frighteningly low. What we saw was this: farmers can grow high-quality cauliflower, yet they are powerless to bargain with the market. Producers cannot set prices for the products they produce themselves. Every round of cultivation damages farmers' confidence in their own products and their persistence in farming.

Only on this visit to Meinong to interview tobacco farmers did we realize the impact of "contract farming" on farmers. The production and marketing target is clear, the purchase price is stable, and the possibility of household reproduction increases. As long as farming can ensure stable income, supporting a family is not a problem, and farming can become one of the employment options for young people.

Perhaps we misunderstand "contract farming" as something only the state can do, but signing small-scale purchasing cooperation is also one form of contract farming, just as the red bean partner of the tobacco farmer uncle also provided protection for the uncle's red bean cultivation.

Farmers facing the market alone are like soldiers on a battlefield. They may be full of martial skill, but without armor and weapons, they lose the ability to resist and attack, and with only their bodies and fists they let blades from all directions cut into them.

Perhaps what we can do is this: besides urging the government to protect farmers' rights and interests, each person can also do their utmost to take care of the most fragile link, so that farmers no longer have to face the ruthless production and marketing system alone. Then Taiwan's agriculture will have more chances to grow up healthily.<Meinong Tobacco Chapter End>

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Summer Cultivation Rural Grassroots Field Survey Series One: Meinong Tobacco (2)
Summer Cultivation Rural Grassroots Field Survey Series One: Meinong Tobacco (1)

References
Liudui Exploration Journey
Hong Xinlan, Tobacco Meinong: Meinong Area Hakka Culture and Tobacco Economy, Tangshan, 1999.
Hong Xinlan, Taiwan's Tobacco Leaves, Yuanzu Culture, 2004.
Tsai Peihui, Farmer Differentiation Under Agricultural Structural Transformation (1980-2005), National Taiwan University Doctoral Dissertation, 2009.