In China, the solution to satisfying a sweet tooth has been less picturesque, but more reliable—grow your own sweetness. Sugar has been cultivated in China in the warm southern provinces since antiquity, when stone rollers and raw muscle power from man and beast were used to extract the juice.
With the growth of trade, sugar became a valuable export. Taiwan's sugar exports date back to the 17th Century but it was not until 1900, five years after the Japanese occupation of the island (1895-1945), that the first modern sugar factories were established. For the entire period of Japanese rule over the Chinese province, sugar and rice were the two mainstays of Taiwan's economy, and they remained so during the early years of postwar reconstruction.
The Taiwan Sugar Corporation, a state monopoly which is responsible for growing and marketing all Taiwan's sugar, was formed in 1946 from the four largest Japanese companies. It has nearly 1,200 miles of narrow gauge railway track, 166 corporate farms, and employs 13,000 people. "Taisugar is the largest land owner in the ROC," according to Yen Yu-chun, the company's vice-president. "Total agricultural land in Taiwan is around 2,173,600 acres, of which Taisugar owns approximately 116,000." But that is by no means the total acreage given to sugar. Taisugar only produces about 250,000 metric tons itself. Another 300,000 or so is produced by share croppers.
"Share croppers with Taisugar get a very good deal," Yen says. "Not only does the company provide everything needed for cane cultivation from seed to the parasitic wasps used to control pests, it also harvests and markets the sugar, giving the farmer a guaranteed price on the export market." If the actual market price is lower than the guaranteed price, Taisugar underwrites the loss. If it is higher, they pass the profits on to the farmer. Today's international price is around US$180 a metric ton. On the local market, the farmer receives the going rate. "Because Taisugar keeps the price stable, it is a sure source of income for the farmer," Yen says. At present the domestic market price is about US$680 a metric ton.
But growing sugar cane and producing sugar was not all money in the bank. As a farmer, Taisugar found its crops beset by pests and diseases, and as a secondary producer, its production lines complicated by problems of waste, recycling, and the need to update techniques. Drawing on a research organization founded in 1901, Taisugar formed its own research station in 1948, the Taiwan Sugar Research Institute, located just outside Tainan in southern Taiwan. "It is now one of the leading sugar research stations in the world," says Dr. Pan Yung-sung, advisor to the company and head of the department of plant protection at the Institute. "Other countries, such as the U.S. and South Africa, also have research stations, but our intensive work here is due in part to necessity. Unlike many other parts of the world, we have few natural resources. So we have focused on those areas of greatest natural endowment."
A recent Taisugar success story—ROC 1, a cane developed especially for local soils.
The company's decision to establish a research station turned out to be fortuitous. Quite apart from the immediate problems of growing cane and producing sugar, a far more serious problem loomed in the '70s—falling sugar prices on the world market. Two decades ago, under Taisugar's management, the ROC became one of the world's largest sugar exporting countries, but now total production has been cut to 550,000 metric tons, compared with Cuba's 6 million, and the world's 100 million.
Yen estimates that the company loses US$4.7 million for every 10,000 metric tons of sugar it exports. Currently, 470,000 metric tons is used locally, whereas in 1950 only 150,000 was consumed by the people on Taiwan, leaving but 80,000 to be exported. "Our aim is to balance production and local consumption," Yen says, which is understandable in view of the heavy export losses.
Changes in eating habits have also affected sales in some parts of the world. Health writers have argued that sugar is "sweet, white, and deadly," and leads to obesity, cardiac problems, and diabetes, not to mention tooth decay. But sugar producers disagree. Pan says that at the last meeting of the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists (ISSCT) in Jakarta in 1986, analyses of over 1,000 reports by the United States Food & Drug Administration indicated no proven connection between heart disease, diabetes, and sugar. The only thing it can be definitely blamed for is tooth decay. "In fact, aspertum, an artificial sweetener, is 300-400 times as sweet as sugar and contains an appetite stimulant, so you are just as likely to get fat and suffer from obesity-related diseases from eating that as you are from sugar," Pan concludes. Whatever the case, adverse publicity as well as falling prices due to over-production have caused severe headaches for the sugar industry.
But in Taiwan all was not lost, thanks largely to the work of the Institute, which found ways to improve productivity, cut production costs, recycle waste, make maximum use of by-products, and integrate non-sugar related enterprises into the Taisugar operation. By-products now account for 40 percent of Taisugar's production. Yen goes so far as to say, "The time may come when sugar itself becomes the by-product."
The Taiwan Sugar Research Institute has 48 programs underway, ranging from tissue cell culture to computer control of L-lycine fermentation. Although the Institute may begin pure research programs if basic information is needed about some plant or animal they hope to utilize, its work for the most part is extremely practical. A good example is its development of an effective species of parasitic wasp used in cane borer control. The Institute's researchers are certainly not the "Ivory tower" sort, but eagerly share their findings with others in the field and take every opportunity to upgrade their skills and research techniques. Both Individuals and the Institute itself have memberships in the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists, which has over 465 members around the world. The society meets every three years and the Institute's staff members regularly present papers The Institute also produces its own periodical, the Report of the Taiwan Sugar Research Institute, and its staff contributes articles to other notable scientific journals, as well as holding frequent seminars.
Staff members belong to professional societies in their individual fields of research, covering breeding, agronomy, plant physiology, plant pathology, entomology and the like, so they maintain access to relevant developments outside the immediate world of sugar research. But when Taisugar wants to diversify, it seeks assistance from others—as it did not long ago when investigating the potentially profitable field of asexual propagation of butterfly orchids (phalaenopsis) for the Japanese market.
Most of the results of the Institute's research findings are freely available to anyone interested in them. This has included research assistance to other countries on especially critical problems. For example, the staff worked closely with American researchers when U.S. sugar crops were invaded with cane rust in 1972, and again in 1976 when cane smut was introduced from the Philippines. Moreover, Institute research is not always sugar-specific. It has also done research for the Council of Agriculture on corn borers, because corn and cane borers are quite similar pests. Exceptions to this free now of information occur only when particularly hot commercial numbers are being investigated. These are understandably veiled in secrecy until the moment of grand denouement.
The work of the Institute falls into two main categories: sugar cane cultivation and related topics such as soil improvement, pest control, plant pathology, and by-products research into uses for molasses and bagasse, the materials left after the sucrose has been extracted from the cane.
Sugar cane is particularly suitable for research because it is a relatively "stable" crop, remaining in the field for 12 to 18 months and suffering little interference in the way of weeding or cultivation. Pan explains that the cane's great height and growth density makes spraying it with insecticide not only very costly, but also fairly ineffective because the liquid cannot reach all the way down the stalks. After the appearance in Taiwan fields of the cane borer, one of sugar cane's worst enemies, the Institute decided to combat the pest with a parasite. It began intensive research on the life cycle and habits of a minute parasitic wasp—0.024 inches long—which lays its eggs in cane borer eggs, thus destroying the host.
The Institute now breeds the wasps, using grey moth eggs, which the wasps like just as well, instead of cane borer eggs. A jar of the moth eggs, sterilized to prevent them from hatching, looks as if it is filled with fine ground rice. A standard size teaspoon would hold about 65,000 of the eggs. In preparation for their pest control role, the moth eggs are spread evenly on slightly sticky cards, and the female wasps are released to lay their eggs. Each wasp lays about 100. After a few days, when the young wasps are almost ready to hatch, the cards are cut into two-inch squares, each containing roughly 1,000 eggs. Every month four cards are placed in each hectare (2½ acres) of cane, from one month after planting to one month before harvesting. The emerging wasps are attracted to cane borer eggs, if any should be present, by kairomones, chemical substances which are produced by one species of insect and are specifically attractive to another. At US$0.03 a card, the method provides a very economical method of pest control.
Other approaches to pest control include using fungus to control white grubs, and employing straightforward poisoning as in the case of cane rats. The latter are not the two-foot monsters found in Africa, but two smaller species, the Bandicota nemorivaga and the Rattus losea. The latter are rather attractive little animals, six to eight inches long excluding their tails, with soft grey-brown hair and neat cars. The larger one, the Bandicota, are considered by some countryside gourmets to be good eating, thanks to their heavy diet of sweet sugar cane.
It is estimated that about 100 of the large rats inhabit each hectare of cane. They migrate to the cane fields after the rice harvest, and although they actually cat but two percent of the cane, the damage they do is far greater because they nibble the choicest part of the stalk, causing the whole cane to keel over and stop producing sugar. This affects both the quality and quantity of the sucrose. The Institute is constantly looking for ways effectively to eliminate rats at lower cost and less danger to other species. Field rat problems have become particularly severe because their natural predators, snakes, have been heavily preyed on by man. Snakes are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine, and Taiwan's 32 species of snake, mostly very poisonous, constitute a rich export item as well as a popular local money earner.
Genetic tampering with sugar cane varieties provides another approach to pest control. The Institute is tackling genetic alteration of the cane in two ways: conventional cross-breeding and genetic engineering. With crossing, a new variety is created; with genetic engineering, there is a whole new species, although it may bear a close resemblance to the old one. Researchers actually propagate about 50,000 new varieties of cane a year, of which only one or two—or even none—turn out to be of any use. It takes about 10 years to select a promising variety in the field, so progress is understandably slow. Currently, attention is focused on a cross between sugar cane and miscanthus, which is a wild cousin of sugar and has all the virtues, or vices, of a weed. It is resistant to disease and drought, adaptable, and prolific. Unfortunately, it also has a low sugar content. The latest offspring is 1/64th miscanthus, and looks quite promising. Pan is optimistic about the possibilities of the new strain: "We hope that by introducing this we can reduce the production costs of fertilizer, insect control, and irrigation. "
Another genetic engineering project underway at the Institute is introducing a nitrogen-fixing gene from a completely different species. One of the Institute's staff, at present studying in England, says he has been able to introduce genetic material from other plants into the sugar cane cell. This is a promising development, and should assist other research work already in progress.
Yeast ferments from molasses in a huge vat at Hsin-Ying By-Products Factory.
But the Institute's research goals of increased sugar production and effective pest control are only part of the story. While few people may think of sugar as a raw material for industry, it has in fact become exactly that. Sugar is a carbohydrate, petroleum is a hydrocarbon; their chemical similaries indicate rich possibilities for deriving similar products for the marketplace. Molasses, the general term for various thick syrups produced in the refinement of sugar, and bagasse, the dry pulp waste material, are both being used to produce substitutes for petrol-derived substances. These cover the gamut from rayon yarn to liquid fuel.
The whole cane plant, including stalk and leaves, is about 70-80 percent juice, but the part recoverable as sucrose accounts for only 10-11 percent. The rest, solid and liquid alike, is waste in terms of sugar production. Most of the products derived from waste molasses and bagasse are still in the experimental stage, or are thus far uneconomical when competing with petro-chemical products. Nevertheless, there is great potential.
"The Institute is working hard to improve on several promising substances we have already developed, plus we have other new ones on the way," Yen says. One example of an uncompetitive yet good product is a polish made from the waxy coating of the cane stalk. "It appeared briefly on the market, but had to be withdrawn because of a higher price than the petroleum-based competition," Yen continues. But there are other applications, and researchers are busy exploring different products that may be more successful in face to face, or shelf to shelf, competition. A new microbial gum offers one possibility. A highly viscous substance derived from molasses, it could be used in drilling. But economic problems enter again, this time because oil companies have been reluctant to experiment with it due to the costs of making equipment changes. The gum has had success in other fields, however, most notably as a food additive where it is used in juices, sweets, and jam to improve their texture.
Unlike Brazil, which developed gasohol from sugar in order to cut down on petroleum imports, Taiwan has the reverse foreign currency problem—too much—so import substitution is not a priority in this case. Nevertheless, research is underway to increase the efficiency of ethanol production from the fermentation of molasses, although Taisugar is not producing anywhere near its capacity of 24,000 gallons per day. At the moment alcohol is produced exclusively for the use of the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau, which is Taisugar's only legal customer, and the company itself has to buy back the alcohol needed for its own use.
A parasitic wasp has replaced costly and dangerous pesticides.
The Institute has also developed a super water-absorbent resin made from cassava starch or sucrose that can absorb 1,500 times its own weight in water. When water is added, the dry resin powder swells rapidly to a clear, self-supporting gel. Possible applications range from personal care products, such as diapers, to agricultural uses, including seed and root coating and as an additive to sandy soils to improve their water-retention.
Animal feed research has been another area of success. Researchers have found a way of producing L-lycine from molasses. L-lycine is an amino acid essential to all animals, including man, but is found naturally only in small quantities in things like soya beans. This research is by no means academic as far as Taisugar is concerned. The company owns a herd of 600,000 pigs for which they produce their own feed, adding 3.5 percent of molasses and 1.5 percent of L-lycine. This is a typical example of Taisugar's thriftiness, and one reason why the company has continued to show a profit despite sugar's hard times: sugar waste feeds their pigs and pig waste fertilizes their sugar.
Molasses is perhaps the more versatile of sugar's wastes, but the Institute's researchers have come up with plenty of uses for bagasse as well. "The bagasse processing factory in Pingtung, southern Taiwan, is the largest in the world," Yen says. "Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, and Cuba all produce bagasse; but in Cuba, for example, production is only 100 metric tons a day. The ROC produces three times as much. A number of countries are showing more interest in using bagasse. Indonesia has asked for our assistance in selling up a factory, and India already has a number of small operations attached to sugar factories. Another instance is Mauritius, which already uses bagasse to produce hardboard for the furniture industry."
Taisugar used to burn bagasse to fuel its factories, and it still burns the very short fibers from the pith. However, it now makes a variety of paper and other products from it as well. The most useful part of bagasse is the cellulose fibers from which paper and yarns can be made. The main drawback is that the fibers are fairly short, so that producing even newsprint quality paper requires reinforcement with wood pulp.
Despite these limitations, the Institute has developed a number of reasonably durable paper items such as plates, cups, and other containers currently made from plastic. Local environmentalists would be delighted to have biode-gradable bagasse products replace the ubiquitous plastic containers—the discards of which infest the island. Unfortunately, the products are uncompetitive with petrol-derived plastic. And in any case, Taiwan is in no hurry to complicate its trade imbalance by cutting down on petrol imports.
If paper seems a far cry from sugar, Taisugar's latest idea is even further afield. The company has already contributed significantly to Taiwan's agricultural, economic, and scientific development, and now it is focusing attention on a sociological problem: recreation. With their steadily increasing affluence, people no longer are worried about satisfying only basic living requirements. There are rapidly rising levels of expectations from leisure time. Just as land owners in other parts of the world have found "holiday farming" gives a very good yield per acre, Taisugar has been considering the same "crop." "We need recreation centers. There are more and more people, with more and more money and spare time. Taisugar has the land, and by developing recreation centers we would be providing a community service. Of course, we would also like to show a profit, or at least break even," Yen says.
This is one area of development in which the Institute would be unlikely to playa major role, but it is indicative of the "can-do" attitude of its staff. Largely due to its research work, and to the foresight of its management, Taisugar remains in a position not only to survive, but—like the whole island—to use its resources to branch out into innovative enterprises.