Chapter 118 - Grain Supply

The bulk of the supplies was grain. It would take six months for Jeju Island and Kaohsiung to achieve self-sufficiency in grain, and at least four months for the Kaohsiung-Pingtung area in Taiwan. This meant that from the start of the Engine Plan, they would need to maintain a five-month food supply for 200,000 refugees and ensure the dietary needs of about 10,000 Guihua personnel.

Calculated by caloric value, each refugee needed the equivalent of 350 grams of brown rice per day. Although this was relatively low, most refugees were not assigned labor and were mainly recuperating. This would require 70 tons of brown rice per day, 2,100 tons per month, and 10,500 tons over five months. The participating personnel were supplied with an average of 750 grams per day, consuming 225 tons of rice per month, for a total demand of 1,200 tons. In addition, the Ministry of Health, from a nutritional perspective, recommended adding 10% vegetables and protein to ensure the health of the refugees. Therefore, a certain amount of vegetables and seafood also needed to be provided. Most of these supplies could be sourced locally by organizing the refugees, with Tiandihui providing technical guidance, seeds, and production tools.

This grain supply did not include the food needs of the original inhabitants of Jeju Island. Although there were certainly some grain reserves on the island, Jeju Island itself was not a grain-producing area. Until the 21st century, the main agricultural product of Jeju Island was citrus. Most of the land on the island was used for raising horses. It was clear that the island’s grain had always needed to be imported.

“According to our intelligence, the Joseon Dynasty had a large-scale government camp on Jeju Island,” Thorpe said. “There were at least ten thousand government slaves. To feed these government slaves, the camp must have had one or two months of grain reserves. The small number of civilians on the island should also have some grain, so we don’t need to supply them for the time being. But we must consider the later supply.”

Jeju Island is not far from the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, so it was feasible to supplement some grain from these two places on a small scale. At that time, Japan had already begun to restrict the export of silver, but there was no mention of restricting the export of rice.

The difficult part was the transit base in Taiwan. There were no channels for purchasing grain locally. The agricultural level of the natives in Taiwan was very low, and they had no surplus grain to supply. The Dutch were interested in trade, not in land reclamation and farming. Although Fujian immigrants had been reclaiming and cultivating land in the Beigang area since the time of Yan Siqi, and Zheng Zhilong continued to send immigrants there, grain production in Taiwan had always been unsatisfactory and relied on external supplies until the Qing Dynasty. The possibility of obtaining grain supplies from Zheng Zhilong was extremely small. The possibility of buying grain from the mainland was also small, as Fujian itself was a grain-deficient province.

The bulk of the grain supply could only rely on self-transportation. The logistics department needed to prepare a large amount of grain. The Planning Department had made a contingency plan for the grain supply—the people transported from Shandong and Zhejiang had to be fed and clothed, and all this had to be planned uniformly.

Now, the Lin’gao regime controlled not just Lin’gao County. After the Summer Awakening Campaign, all the local regimes in Qiongzhou had been completely controlled by the Council of Elders in a “Ming skin, Australian heart” model. The grain supply situation had improved, but the improvement was limited.

The fields in the southern counties of Qiongzhou were scarce and contributed little to expanding the grain reserves—one could tell the local agricultural productivity from the grain tax figures of the southern counties. Only Yazhou had a grain tax of three thousand shi. Prefectures and counties like Gan’en and Huichang only had over a thousand shi, or even just a few hundred shi. In contrast, the agricultural conditions in the northern counties of Qiongzhou were better, especially in Qiongshan County and Wenchang, which were the main grain-producing areas of Qiongzhou. The work teams of the People’s Committee of Civil Affairs had been carrying out the work of clearing up the land tax in the northern counties of Qiongzhou one by one since the second half of 1630.

The total land tax of the entire Qiongzhou Prefecture was 85,459 shi. A portion was collected in grain and a portion in silver. Due to the weak commodity economy of Qiongzhou and the scarce circulation of silver, most of it was still priced in grain.

Of this official amount, about half was to be transported to the capital, the provincial capital, and Lianzhou. That is to say, forty to fifty thousand shi were to be transported out of Qiongzhou Prefecture each year. About forty thousand shi were left in the prefecture for military pay, administrative expenses, and reserve grain. This remaining portion was, of course, the disposable grain of the Planning Department.

Of course, in reality, the amount of grain paid by the people was far more than 85,500 shi. Based on the experience of the People’s Committee of Civil Affairs and the General Taxation Bureau in “clearing up the land tax” in Lin’gao, the actual amount of grain paid in the entire prefecture should be at least 140,000 shi. The excess grain was actually embezzled at various levels.

In other words, the Council of Elders could collect 140,000 shi from Qiongzhou Prefecture while maintaining the existing burden level. After paying the more than 40,000 shi of designated transport tax to the Ming Dynasty, the entire Qiongzhou Prefecture could probably contribute 100,000 shi of brown rice to the Council of Elders.

In addition to this land tax, the Planning Department planned to purchase another ten to twenty thousand shi of grain from farmers and landlords. However, to complete the purchase task, they had to stimulate their demand for currency. At present, when the enterprises of the Council of Elders still lacked sufficient industrial products to sell to the rural areas, this could only be achieved through taxation. This required the cooperation of tax system reform. The people from Wudaokou believed that in the long run, monetized taxation was the general trend.

Of course, collection, processing, and warehousing were long-term tasks; it wasn’t something that could be done overnight. Fortunately, collecting and transporting refugees was also a long-term process. It wasn’t that 200,000 people would suddenly appear. The Planning Department still had ample time to collect and prepare the grain.

In addition to the Council of Elders’ own grain reserves, the Summer Awakening Campaign also brought additional reserves to the Planning Department. These were the five large official granaries on Hainan Island: the Guangfeng Granary in Qiongshan, which stored 16,000 shi of rice annually; the Dafeng Granary in Danzhou, with 3,000 shi; the Guangchu Granary in Changhua, with 5,600 shi; the Guangji Granary in Wanzhou, with 4,000 shi; and the Junchu and Qinglan Granaries, which stored 13,000 shi of rice annually.

These official granaries stored tens of thousands of shi of grain each year, mainly for “preparing for the Li.” In the event of a large-scale “Li rebellion,” the large army crossing the sea for a punitive expedition could obtain grain locally.

However, just like all systems in this world, a good system is sometimes not well maintained. According to official documents, the accumulated grain in these major official granaries should have been several hundred thousand shi. But in reality, the deficit was very serious. The special search team of the Planning Department, along with the army and work teams, went deep into the warehouses of every prefecture and county and was completely used to the phenomenon of embezzlement. But the huge deficit in these five large granaries still left the leading Elder dumbfounded.

The actual inventory of the five granaries showed that after removing the aged grain that was purely for show and could at most be used as feed, the usable grain was less than one-tenth of the book inventory.

The special search team then conducted severe interrogations of the clerks, managers, and grain probers of each granary to recover the stolen goods, and seized a large amount of property and grain, and also confiscated a large amount of land. It was a slight gain.

“The grain received from the various local official granaries in the previous stage amounted to 100,000 shi of brown rice and miscellaneous grains, totaling about 9,000 tons. This amount of grain is sufficient for a start,” Wu De said. “At present, our relief rations are using our own reserves of dried sweet potatoes. We still have a lot of dried sweet potato reserves. This can roughly support the consumption of the refugees.”

“This makes us a bit tight. It’s like we’re putting all our savings on the line. I originally thought the grain reserves were a bit looser,” He Ming said with some concern. Grain was the lifeblood of the army, and the thought of transporting so much grain made him very uneasy.

Zhan Wuyai also felt it was precarious: “Besides the army, we also have a large number of non-productive people in Lin’gao: administrative personnel, students, and workers. The grain supply for this part of the population cannot go wrong, otherwise it will easily shake the foundation of the state.”

Wu De had already done the calculations on this issue: “Food security is guaranteed. First of all, the grain used for the Engine Plan is something we obtained extra. We got this batch of grain without increasing the population we support. Using it on the refugees does not reduce our original reserves, nor does it increase our original planned grain expenditure. Secondly, after gaining control of the entire island, we have obtained the right to collect the land tax for the entire island in 1631. The increase in revenue in this area is very significant. And it is a stable increase, unlike seizures which are one-time.”

In addition, the Planning Department also planned to expand grain imports as an important measure to ensure food security, with a focus on importing Siamese rice. The supply of rice from Vietnam had begun to decrease and the price had risen due to the intensification of the war between the north and the south. The cheap and abundant Siamese rice became the next target for the Planning Department to increase its grain reserves. This would just occupy freight tonnage. But overall, the grain pressure was not as great as everyone thought.

Wu De explained that immigrant transportation was a long-term plan. From the first batch to the last, it would take at least four to five months, and at most one to two years. As long as the first batch of refugees was organized to reclaim land and plant early-maturing crops in the transit camps, they could actually harvest in three to four months. The harvested grain could then replace a portion of the supply on the spot. Therefore, it was not necessary to calculate the food for all the immigrants.

The early-maturing sweet potato varieties owned by the Agriculture Committee could be harvested in about 80-90 days. There were also suitable varieties of potatoes and buckwheat. The Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas have an average annual temperature of up to 25°C, with abundant rainfall, and can be cultivated all year round. By adopting rolling planting and staggered harvesting, by the time the large-scale immigration from Zhejiang ended, even if the agriculture in Kaohsiung could not provide grain for Jeju Island, it could still achieve a considerable degree of self-sufficiency.

“…If there is a real supply shortage, we can also use Hong Kong as a base. We can directly purchase grain in Guangdong and then ship it to Kaohsiung. The distance between the two places is only 350 nautical miles, and a round trip can be made in a week,” he said finally.