Meinong Tobacco Leaves: Summer Farming Rural Grassroots Field Survey Series One (1)

Text by Wu Jialing, Kuo Yenting, Liao Zhenya

Meinong Township, located in Kaohsiung County, if you set out from Taipei, you must take a train for more than four hours, then transfer to a bus for about an hour and a half; over the roughly six hours on the road you can feel the landscape and the language shift, from the Mandarin of the city, to the Minnan of the countryside, and all the way to the Hakka of Meinong Township.

With nervous yet excited feelings we arrived in Meinong, but we did not forget that this trip was not purely sightseeing and leisure; we also had an important purpose, to understand the history of tobacco leaf cultivation in Meinong, and how Meinong's local tobacco farmers are facing the situation today, under market liberalization and the government's restrictions on planted area, of a tobacco leaf industry that is gradually withering.

Meinong's Terrain and Climate

The original name of "Meinong" was "Minong", coming from the last two lines of the inscription on Meinong Township's founding stele: "We beseech Heaven above that this land may be great and may also endure, and that generation after generation it shall grow ever more abundant"; it was not until 1920 that the Japanese borrowed the Japanese place name Mino and renamed Minong as "Meinong", and "Meinong" has continued in use to this day.

Meinong Township is located at the northern end of the Pingtung alluvial fan plain, with relatively flat terrain and fertile soil. Meinong lies in a plain area, surrounded by mountains on three sides: to the east, Chading Mountain connects to Liugui Township; to the northwest, the Yueguang Mountain range borders Shanlin Township; the two mountain ranges meet at Jianshan in the northeast, which is the "Lishan" of the writer Zhong Lihe. To the west, the Nanzixian River is adjacent to Qishan Township; to the south, the west side of the Laonong River faces Gaoshu Township of Pingtung County across the stream. The terrain slopes gently from northeast to southwest. In its surroundings, the Hengshan mountain range lies in the center, with the rest being gentle foothill plains, within which the Youzailin River, the Meinong River and the Jiangzailiao River meet at Sanjiashui; to the south of the Meinong plain are distributaries of the Laonong River.

(After the rain, the saturated moisture gives Meinong a picturesque scene.)

Meinong's climate is typical of southern Taiwan's island climate: June to September of the Gregorian calendar is the rainy period, October to April of the following year is the dry period, and May and June are the plum rain season. The total annual rainfall is about 1,500 mm, and the average annual temperature is about 24 degrees. Because the climate is on the warm and hot side, compared with other regions of Taiwan, rice cultivation starts earlier: the first rice crop is usually sown in December, with seedlings transplanted in January, and harvested from June to July 15; the second rice crop is sown not long after the harvest, and harvested around October 10. Intercropping and between-crop planting during the two rice crops is a normal phenomenon in Meinong's agriculture, and among the intercrop plants tobacco is the most dominant, because the winter climate of southern Taiwan is very suitable for tobacco growth.

In addition to soil and climate suitable for tobacco growth, the tobacco industry policy of the Monopoly Bureau from the 1970s onward, which moved the tobacco leaf production areas southward, was also one of the opportunities that made Meinong a major tobacco leaf city in Taiwan. The long history of tobacco cultivation also shaped Meinong's local landscape and culture. If you visit Meinong in winter, you will find a crop in the fields, with plants as tall as a person, leaves as long as an arm and wider than a palm; this is the main industry that supports the development of the Meinong area - tobacco leaf.

Taiwan Tobacco Leaf

Generally speaking, Taiwan tobacco belongs to the "winter between-crop", a crop cultivated in the fields in winter after the two rice crops are harvested.

Making tobacco leaf a "winter between-crop" is the most distinctive feature of tobacco cultivation in Taiwan. Around the world, tobacco is generally planted in spring (spring tobacco), yet Taiwan's tobacco farmers, in order to avoid the risk of summer typhoons, choose to begin planting in autumn (autumn tobacco). Spring tobacco is of better quality, but one must bear the risk of facing the typhoon season and the plum rain season. In the past, the Monopoly Bureau wanted to promote spring tobacco cultivation to raise the quality of domestically produced raw material tobacco leaf, but the factor of natural climate has always been an enormous challenge.

However, although on the whole spring tobacco is better than autumn tobacco, in the production process of a single cigarette and cigar several kinds of tobacco are blended to create layered flavors. In this survey, a tobacco farmer said that foreign tobacco merchants had once come to inspect Taiwan's autumn tobacco to study whether it could be used as an ingredient in new tobacco products. Therefore, if properly researched and developed, the special "autumn tobacco" might become one of Taiwan's tobacco advantages.

In addition, the tobacco cultivation process requires a large input of manpower. After collecting seeds from the Monopoly Bureau, when the second rice crop is heading, tobacco farmers usually clear a space in the rice field and set up plastic sheds to raise tobacco seedlings, waiting for the seedlings to grow before transplanting them into the fields. In the care process, besides fertilizing, spraying and weeding, because tobacco is a controlled crop, the flower buds of the tobacco must also be removed one by one by hand.

(Dried tobacco leaves are tied into bundles before being handed in)

Finally, when the tobacco harvest season arrives, manpower must also be mobilized to pick the tobacco leaves one leaf at a time. Fresh tobacco leaves must be cured by the tobacco farmer before they can be handed in. In the past, when traditional tobacco curing barns were used, curing the tobacco leaves usually took as long as a week, and the fire had to be watched continuously all day from morning to night; therefore, curing tobacco leaves was the most manpower-consuming part of tobacco growing in the past. Only with the introduction of electrified curing ovens was the manpower for curing tobacco greatly reduced.

The Control and Contract Farming of the Tobacco Monopoly

In Taiwan, tobacco is a government-controlled crop; tobacco may be planted only in designated tobacco leaf growing areas. Taiwan currently has four major tobacco areas, namely Taichung, Chiayi, Pingtung and Hualien (the Yilan tobacco area was abolished in 1962), and Meinong belongs to the Pingtung tobacco area. The most important reason for taking an important commodity into government monopoly is that it can create enormous revenue for the state.

Taiwan's tobacco leaf monopoly system began during the Japanese colonial period. From 1905 onward, it followed the implementation method of Japan's tobacco monopoly system; during the same period, the Japanese government also implemented planned tobacco cultivation in Meinong. In 1932 (the seventh year of Showa), the Governor-General's Office promulgated the "Documents Concerning the Permit for Trial Cultivation of Yellow Species Tobacco" and the "Regulations for the Encouragement of Tobacco Cultivation", providing funds to subsidize tobacco farmers in growing yellow species tobacco; in the trial cultivation lands for tobacco announced by the Monopoly Bureau in 1937, Meinong Village was also among the trial cultivation lands; in 1939, after "Meinong" appeared in the "Tobacco Cultivation Areas" announced by the Taiwan Governor-General's Office, the tobacco industry became closely linked with Meinong from then on.

In the mid-to-late 1970s, Meinong's tobacco industry reached its peak. 1975 was the year with the largest tobacco leaf planting area in Meinong, with a tobacco planting area of as much as 2,235.3 hectares and 1,800 tobacco-farming households, ranking first in all of Taiwan and accounting for one quarter of Taiwan's total tobacco planting area.

The Monopoly Bureau imposed strict limits on the number of households growing tobacco and the quantity; only tobacco farmers issued a "tobacco license" could grow tobacco, and the control was so strict that the number of plants that could be grown was even clearly marked on the tobacco license. To make it convenient to calculate the number of plants, the Monopoly Bureau clearly stipulated the row spacing of each row of tobacco and the spacing of each tobacco plant, and the Monopoly Bureau would send people to conduct actual spot checks and count the number in each row.

In the past, in order to measure the spacing, after preparing the land, tobacco farmers would find a child in the family and tie a rope of fixed spacing between the child's feet; the child would walk along the field, and each footprint would leave exactly one hole for planting a tobacco leaf.

In addition, to prevent tobacco seeds from leaking out, when the tobacco sends up white flower buds, the tobacco farmer must remove all the flower buds. If they are not thoroughly removed, the Monopoly Bureau will severely punish them: directly reducing the following year's tobacco planting area. Such a heavy penalty led tobacco farmers to call failing to remove the flower buds a "crime deserving beheading".

 
(The early tobacco leaf guidance station is no longer in use; it has now been transformed into the Meinong Guidance Station, carrying out community building and extension work)

There is a contract farming relationship between the Monopoly Bureau and tobacco farmers. The Monopoly Bureau provides seeds (even earlier it would even provide fertilizer), and then after the tobacco leaves are harvested, the Monopoly Bureau guarantees to purchase the tobacco. The purchase prices for each grade are announced before cultivation each year. Under such contract farming guarantees, tobacco farmers are spared the fluctuations of market prices and have a stable income; tobacco farmers were also jokingly called "government farmers".

Tobacco purchase grades are divided into four classes. When the Monopoly Bureau purchases tobacco, it grades the tobacco as the basis for purchase. Before scientific appraisal methods were implemented, grading was carried out by graders dispatched by the Monopoly Bureau. Because the purchase price gap between each grade was extremely large (the price difference per kilogram between each grade reached about fifty yuan), graders and tobacco farmers often clashed because of different judgments of the tobacco leaf grade. In the survey, one tobacco farmer also revealed that in the past, during the tobacco leaf purchasing season, at the place where the Monopoly Bureau purchased tobacco leaves - the tobacco leaf guidance station - incidents of tobacco farmers and graders fighting occurred almost every day.

Meinong's Tobacco Culture

Besides the geographical and climatic conditions suitable for growing tobacco, why did the people of Meinong choose to grow tobacco?

The key point is that compared with other crops, tobacco leaf has a higher value, because under the government's guaranteed purchase policy, farmers who grow tobacco do not need to enter the unpredictable market and let the price of their product be ruthlessly manipulated by the market. Compared with other crops, the profit from growing tobacco can be five to several dozen times higher, and this is the biggest reason the people of Meinong chose to grow tobacco.

Because tobacco leaf is a crop that requires careful tending, from land preparation, raising tobacco seedlings, weeding and removing the core, all the way to the smoking and curing and preparation after the tobacco leaves are picked, it requires a high degree of manpower, labor and capital. In Meinong, only large families with many male members could cope with such enormous labor demand, and for this reason Meinong's traditional families placed even greater importance on having male children.

On the other hand, families with lower labor power used the method of "jiaogong"1; "jiaogong" is a cooperative group formed by three to five households, each household providing an equal amount of manpower. During busier seasons such as harvest, they first gather to help one household, and after that household's work has come to a pause, they move on to the next household, each household taking turns to help. Because of the "jiaogong" system, deep bonds of human feeling were also created among the various families.

When strolling through Meinong, you can see old-style tobacco curing barns still standing, and similar distinctive buildings can also be seen in Taiwan's other tobacco-growing areas. The exterior of the tobacco curing barn is very special: it is a two-story-high brick building, with a protruding skylight like a small attic added on the roof.

With the introduction of automated tobacco curing ovens, the old-style tobacco curing barns have long been abandoned and unused, but the tobacco curing barns one after another are the most obvious mark of Meinong's once-flourishing tobacco industry. In the past, the tar aroma of tobacco leaves always drifted into the nasal passages of the people of Meinong, and it is the people of Meinong's memory of their hometown.

Because of the guarantee of tobacco leaf contract farming, growing tobacco brought Meinong's farmers rich and stable income; therefore, relative to low-priced rice, growing rice seemed instead like a side job. Compared with ordinary farmers, tobacco farmers had more flexibility in financial management; the Monopoly Bureau would even, before the tobacco harvest, advance the "tobacco advance payment" from the tobacco purchase budget appropriated by the Legislative Yuan at the beginning of the year to the tobacco farmers.

Ordinary farmers often had family finances affected by the good or bad harvest of their crops, which in turn affected their children's educational opportunities. Under the protection of contract farming, tobacco farmers enabled the children of Meinong to receive a good education. Meinong is called the "hometown of doctors", and its extremely high proportion of population with higher education also stems from the support of the tobacco industry.

<To be continued>