Chapter 110 - Simple Rations

Food is the first necessity of the people. To attract refugees, one must have sufficient food. Providing food for two hundred thousand people on a long journey is an even heavier burden. Even departing from Shanghai or Zhapu, the sea route to Lin’gao is as long as 900 nautical miles, a ten-day journey for a sailing ship.

Even for a healthy person, completing this sea journey on a crowded and bumpy sailing ship is not an easy task, let alone for a group of hungry refugees suffering from long-term malnutrition. Without a sufficient supply of nutritious and high-calorie rations, they would have little chance of surviving to see the end of the journey.

Based on their years of experience in sheltering refugees, supplying a thin porridge with added vegetables was beneficial for the weak digestive systems of the refugees. After their stomachs gradually adapted, adding protein foods, mainly seafood, to the porridge could enhance their physical fitness.

In the quarantine camps, it was easy to make porridge or other food simply with brown rice and sweet potatoes. However, ordinary grains did not meet Lin’gao’s management and nutritional requirements, and they were also inconvenient to transport and use. It was quite difficult to cook thin porridge for hundreds of people in the small kitchens of the ships. A simple and easy-to-eat food supply was necessary.

Hong Huangnan’s supply plan was based on the “Pillar Operation” for the landing in Sanya—supplying each ship with enough grassland instant rations. This series of instant rations had become very mature, with three main series and twelve varieties. If different flavors and ingredients were included, there were even more subtypes. This series not only fully met the standards for nutrition and calories but also had greatly improved in taste.

However, this plan was vetoed by Wu De. Distributing a large amount of grassland rations was too expensive. Moreover, the stock of grassland rations was insufficient, including the portion stored in the military warehouses, which was only 1.5 times the amount needed for a single campaign. The nutritional structure was also not very reasonable. Grassland rations were high-calorie rations, designed to replenish the large amount of physical energy consumed during intense combat marches, and therefore contained more protein and fat.

The rich protein and fat were difficult for the weak digestive systems of the refugees to handle. Not only that, but the human body’s digestion and metabolism of protein required a large amount of extra fresh water, which could easily cause thirst. This would increase the pressure on the water supply of the refugee ships, which were already crowded and had limited water storage.

Wu De then handed this matter over to the Agriculture Department and the food factory, asking them to develop a special relief ration for refugees.

The biggest difference between relief rations and grassland series rations was the cost. Compared to the diverse and comprehensive grassland series, relief rations focused more on mass production at low cost while ensuring energy and basic nutrition.

This task fell on Xun Suji’s shoulders. As the director of the food factory, he was naturally responsible for this. Xun Suji was married and had a family. At home, his two wives served him well, and more importantly, there was no “family drama” between Liu Meilan and Jin Xishan. The family relationship was relatively harmonious. With a harmonious family, everything prospered. Director Xun not only enjoyed the blessings of having two wives but was also full of energy at work.

After receiving the task, he immediately gathered with the people who had originally developed the grassland rations to discuss how to create the relief rations.

The relief ration meeting was held at the Lotus Pavilion in the South China Sea Farm. Unlike the coffee shop, this place was deliberately designed to have a “rural scenery.” Compared to the past, the surroundings of the Lotus Pavilion had been carefully renovated. By the pond full of lotus leaves, the original large pavilion made of bamboo and straw had been rebuilt into a three-room waterside pavilion with a wooden terrace, surrounded by fruit trees and willows. Green pumpkin vines climbed over the bamboo fence.

Being there felt very much like some of the highly crafted “agritainment” resorts of the old world.

Besides the original developers from the Agriculture Department and “enthusiasts,” Bai Duolu also joined in. He was so enthusiastic about relief rations entirely because of the needs of his missionary work in the Li areas. Agricultural production in the Li areas was even more backward than in the Han areas, especially in the raw Li areas, where slash-and-burn agriculture was practiced, and it was common for villages to have insufficient food. The church often used the distribution of relief food as a means of proselytizing. Therefore, the Lin’gao seminary was in urgent need of a cheap relief ration.

The people who had originally developed the grassland rations were basically a group of “military ration enthusiasts.” Among the Elders, there were many who sat at home in their pajamas eating expensive military instant rations they had bought. They were familiar with things like MREs, British 24-hour rations, French individual heating rations, and the 06 individual self-heating food.

Now, the task of developing a relief ration was like scratching an itch for everyone. Many people came to the Lotus Pavilion, some of whom were not originally on the meeting list, taking time out of their busy schedules to come over.

According to the refugee supply standard formulated by Chen Sigen, the standard food supply for a refugee during “transportation by vehicle” was 1,790 kilocalories per day. This was roughly equivalent to the supply standard in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II and was enough to prevent starvation. Of course, refugees did not engage in any drills or work while being transported. Children, pregnant women, and the sick had separate supply standards.

Wu Nanhai suggested that the primary raw material for the rations should be sweet potato flour—not sweet potato starch. Sweet potato starch is pure starch, while sweet potato flour is made by slicing, drying, and directly grinding sweet potatoes, retaining a large amount of their fiber.

Lin’gao had a large reserve of dried sweet potatoes and sweet potato flour. Tiandihui had extensively promoted improved sweet potato cultivation in Lin’gao. Both state-owned farms and ordinary farmers had produced a large amount of sweet potatoes. It could be said that the supply of raw materials was very sufficient, and it had become an important raw material for Lin’gao’s food industry.

In addition to sweet potato flour, a small amount of protein was needed. Wu Nanhai suggested adding a small amount of bean flour or bean dregs. Leguminous crops, as nitrogen-fixing crops, were widely planted in Lin’gao’s new crop rotation system. Besides soybeans, which were used for oil extraction and tofu production and were in short supply, the reserves of broad beans, peas, black beans, chickpeas, etc., in the granary were quite considerable.

“…Add sugar and salt, mix in some dried vegetables, and if you think the bean dregs are not enough, add some fish meal, and finally dry it into blocks,” Wu Nanhai said.

Ye Yuming said, “Why make it into bricks? It’s a waste of labor. I don’t think it’s necessary. Purely from a low-cost perspective, dried sweet potatoes are fine. We have a large reserve of this, and it doesn’t spoil easily. We can load each ship with a few hundred sacks and distribute some to the refugees at each meal. Guaranteeing 500 grams of dried sweet potatoes per day will ensure they don’t starve. We just need to provide some soup; refugees can’t go without salt.”

He proposed making a concentrated dehydrated seasoning brick: a three-in-one concentrated soup block of miso, kelp, and dried vegetables.

The miso soup made from this soup block was a common dish in Japan and Korea, nutritious, although not very tasty.

“If you want, you can add some dehydrated vegetables or dried fish to the miso soup for extra nutrition. Sweet potatoes have a high fiber content, so there’s no need to supplement with things like cellulose.”

Hong Huangnan continued to advocate his potato flour plan. He had a particular fondness for potatoes and had always advocated that the army and laborers eat more of them.

“It’s still the plan I mentioned before: dehydrated potato flour, animal fat, and spices mixed together. Just add water and cook it into mashed potatoes when eating. Potatoes are nutritious and can completely replace rice and grain. If we can replace the supply for 5,000 soldiers, with each person consuming half a kilogram of rice and grain per day, by eating mashed potatoes for one day a week, we can save 2,500 kilograms of rice and grain per week, and 10,000 kilograms per month. This is a very considerable number. Refugees can certainly eat it too. I don’t think it’s necessary to supply protein to sea-transported refugees. Digesting protein requires water; it’s better to add fat.”

“I want fat myself,” said Dongmen Chuiyu, the representative of the General Staff. “Fat is something that even the Elders don’t have enough of, and you want to give it to refugees? Besides, we have never grown potatoes on a large scale.”

“Potatoes have a short growing season, high yield, and can be used as both a vegetable and a staple food. Excess potatoes can be dehydrated into potato flour for long-term storage! I’ve never understood why the Agriculture Department doesn’t like to promote potatoes.”

“Lin’gao is not suitable for growing potatoes. Let’s promote them in the north,” Wu Nanhai said. The experimental fields of the South China Sea Farm had potato cultivation—purely to maintain the seed source, with no intention of promotion. From the small-scale cultivation, the yield was not as high as in the north and had no advantage over the sweet potatoes grown there.

The yield of potatoes is high, but they have a high water content. The actual grain ratio has to be discounted significantly. According to the standards of the old world, five catties of potatoes are equivalent to one catty of rice.

After discussion, the final relief ration plan was named the “Simple Rations” series. Simple Ration No. 1 was a sweet potato flour “biscuit.” In a standard half-catty brick containing two biscuit bricks, there was a mix of two flavors: salty and sweet. Also finalized and put into production was the “No. 1 Instant Soup Block,” which was the “miso soup” that Ye Yuming had touted. Making miso required beans or rice and wheat, and the raw materials were limited, so it could only be produced in small quantities. One No. 1 Instant Soup Block could make enough miso soup for ten people.

The Simple Rations series later developed into a comprehensive supply ration similar to the Grassland series. However, it had fewer varieties and was simply classified according to its use. In terms of use, it was divided into “on-site relief,” “camp relief,” “vehicle and ship transport relief,” and “foot march relief.” Each variety was further divided into a winter type and a regular type. The calorie and nutritional content of each type of ration were different.

However, the content of the relief rations produced in different batches varied greatly. Depending on the season when the dry rations were produced, the continuous expansion of the territory controlled by the Council of Elders, and the improvement of agricultural production levels, the content of the rations was constantly changing. There were deluxe versions with brown rice flour and whole wheat flour mixed with dried meat, as well as simple versions with just sweet potato leaves and fish meal added to sweet potato flour during tense periods. In general, the weight, size, and the energy and nutritional content of each batch of relief rations did not differ significantly.