Taiwan Today

Across the green land of the southern half of Taiwan Province, the most spectacular green is that of the sugar cane, reaching skyward head-high and more as it nears the time of harvest and growing so thickly that even a mosquito seemingly could not penetrate a field.

I traveled into the sugar country to see some of the production - not only of sugar but of an amazing array of by-products from related operations. I talked with some of the men of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation, the world's largest company working in the field to satisfy man's sweet tooth. My companions were my cousin, Katherine Peavy, a visiting journalist from the sugar beet country of Monterey County, California, and our friend, Josephine Cheng. Katherine was interested in seeing the similarities and the differences in producing sugar from cane and beets.

As in almost every other enterprise of Taiwan, very little is wasted in the growth of sugar cane and the production of the items - and animals – it supplies.

Sugar cane is a kind of perennial grass, as is the spectacular bamboo. Botanists say it originated on the island of New Guinea and was carried to South Asia in prehistoric times. Historically, it is first mentioned in the India of the 4th century B.C.

Arab traders took sugar cane to Africa about 500 A.D. and first introduced crudely made sugar to Europe about the same time. In the early centuries of the Christian era, the Chinese devised sugar-making techniques and introduced sugar cane to Java and the Philippines.

Sugar was produced in Egypt in the 9th century. But not until large-scale production began in the Americas did sugar become more than an expensive luxury sold in small quantities by apothecaries.

Christopher Columbus is credited with introducing sugar cane to the New World. One of his expeditions carried cane to be planted in the islands of the West Indies. The Spanish con­quistadores Cortez and Pizzaro planted cane in Mexico and Peru in the 16th century.

The processing of beet sugar was developed within the last 200 years. Sugar is sugar, chemically speaking. Cane and beet sugar are identical. Few if any consumers can tell the difference. Sugar beets are grown mainly in the United States, Canada and Northern Europe and produce about 40 per cent of the world's supply of sugar.

A considerable part of the Republic of China's sugar production is centered in and around the agricultural town of Pingtung south of Kaohsiung and near the island's end. Plants include an ivy­-covered refinery complex dating back to the 1895-1945 period when the Japanese held Taiwan. This plant is still in operation. Repairs to some of the damage suffered in the battering from typhoon Thelma a few weeks earlier were under way during our visit.

The first production and export of Taiwan sugar dates back to the Dutch period in the 1600s. The Dutch sold sugar to both Europe and Japan. Their operations ended when they were ousted from Taiwan by Cheng Cheng-kung (Koxinga), who was trying to establish a Taiwan base of operations to oust the Manchu invaders and restore the Ming dynasty. Koxinga was interested in promoting sugar production in Taiwan. He drove the Dutch from the island but premature death ended his other dreams.

Modern sugar mills were built on the island by the Japanese around 1900. Sugar and rice were the mainstays of the Taiwan economy for the Japapese occupation period.

During the Second World War, the sugar industry and nearly everything else in Taiwan fell into disarray. With restoration of Taiwan to the Republic of China, four major Japanese sugar companies were merged into the present Taiwan Sugar Corporation. It is owned mainly by the Chinese government. At that time, only the gov­ernment had sufficient capital to repair war-damaged sugar mills and renovate cane farms. Production was restored and increased. For the years 1950 through 1963, sugar was the most important of Taiwan exports - reaching as much as 80 per cent of the total.

Sugar is still a major export. But with the expansion of other industries, its share was reduced to about 2 per cent of the total. Textiles accounted for 22 per cent and electrical machinery apparatus for 16 per cent in 1976.

For a quick look at Taiwan Sugar Corporation operations today, the company operates 25 sugar mills, three by-products plants, seven alcohol dis­tilleries, an agricultural chemistry works, an agri­cultural machinery office, a sugar research institute, an animal industry research institute, a dozen animal farms, four warehousing and transportation service stations, a tidelands reclamation office and a large pulp mill - plus some other enterprises.

Taisugar also has its own railroad system with about 2,500 kilometers of track. The company has 17,000 employees, many of whom live in villages near the refineries. As is the case with workers of other government enterprises, they benefit from health, welfare, insurance and similar programs.

Sugar cane thrives in a tropical or subtropical climate and will grow in almost any kind of soil -­ from light, sandy loam to heavy, sticky clay. Naturally, the more nutrients it receives, the higher and thicker will be the cane. The crop requires a lot of water. While Taiwan rainfall is heavy, it isn't always well-distributed; cane growers use considerable irrigation water, much of it from artesian wells.

Since Taiwan's arable land is limited, the most fertile soil is reserved for rice and other crops yielding two or more harvests a year. Cane is generally grown in poorer soil but is heavily fertilized to stimulate growth. Both chemical fertilizers and those composted from manure and cane waste are used.

Much of Taiwan's cane is grown under a system called "ratooning" - letting new stalks sprout from the perennial roots. This process is usually profitable for about four years. Cane is also propagated by planting sections of the stalks, which sprout at the joints. It is never grown from the exceeding­ly fine seed. One hundred or so cane seeds weigh no more than a grain of wheat. New Taiwan cane fields can be planted at almost any time of the year.

During the Japanese occupation, a planting of cane matured, ready for cutting, in about 18 months. Chinese agricultural researchers and technicians have developed new and better varieties, some from stock imported from Africa and other cane growing regions. Growth time now averages 14 months and the yield has been greatly increased.

Sugar cane is subject to attack by various insect pests and diseases. These are combatted by chemical weapons imported or manufactured by Taisugar and provided to independent growers at near cost.

There also is competition for cane fields from rats, which have well-developed "sweet teeth." When a campaign against the rodent pests got under way some years ago, the kill was estimated at 20 million annually. Sugar farmers are now winning the battle, or at least more than holding their own, by setting out liberal offerings of a special kind of rat poison four times a year.

The sugar company people wouldn't guess as to the number of rodents now killed each year, but rat damage has been reduced from an estimated 6 to 7 per cent of the crop to about 3 per cent.

The system has worked better than one tried by sugar growers in Hawaii many years ago. The Hawaiian islands had no rats until they came ashore from ships, spread into the countryside and found the cane to their liking. Growers thought they had the answer in small weasel-like Indian animals called mongooses that were im­ported to combat the rats. The only trouble was that the rats feed by night, while mongooses do their hunting by day. Not finding many rats or snakes - a favored fare in India - the mongooses concentrated on bird life and eggs. Hawaii soon had had more than enough of both mongooses and rats.

Unlike some other sugar-producing countries, Taiwan does not burn its matured cane to remove the dried leaves and make cutting easier. The leaves may not contain sugar but they go into other useful products. The sugar cane harvest season begins about November 1 and runs into May of the following year. The average output per hectare (2½ acres) is around 80 metric tons.

The Taiwan Sugar Corporation owns about a third of the approximately 95,000 hectares (237,500 acres) planted to sugar cane in the Republic of China. The other two-thirds belongs to some 140,000 farmers with an average planting of less than half a hectare. The corporation stands ready to rent equipment or furnish cultivation services to small operators at nominal charges.

A farmer receives 55 per cent of the refined sugar his land produces. Because of frequent wide fluctuations in the sugar market, a price guarantee system protects small producers. Henry Chen, the deputy general manager of the Pingtung District sugar factory, told us how the system works:

The corporation sets in advance of each sugar growing season a guaranteed price to insure farmers against loss in the sometimes extreme gyrations of world prices. The price is supported by a "Sugar Stabilization Fund" financed by a portion of export sales revenue.

If the market price falls below that set by TSC, the farmer is still paid the guaranteed figure. If the price is higher than the guarantee, he profits from the additional amount.

Sugar prices skyrocketed during the world shortage of 1973 and 1974. Exported raw sugar went over the price of US$1,000 a ton and brought Taiwan foreign exchange of more than US$156 million in 1973 and US$321 million in 1974. At the time of our visit, the price was down to about US$200 a ton. Taisugar's average export sales volume is around US$70 million a year.

People of Taiwan are among the corporation's best customers. It takes about 45 per cent of the cane crop, about 300,000 tons, to satisfy their craving for sweetening. With the growing population and a rising standard of living, this is expected to increase by some 20,000 tons annually. The average per capita consumption of sugar in the Republic of China is 19½ kilograms (43 pounds), This doesn't count the stalks of freshly peeled cane eaten as a confection, chiefly by children, and popular all over Taiwan and in other sugar-growing countries,

When ready for cutting, a sugar cane plantation looks a bit like a cornfield after the first frost. This is the stage at which burning takes place in some countries, leaving the bare, blackened canes easier to cut. Part of the Taiwan cane is still cut in the traditional way by field workers wielding large knives, For the rest, the sugar company is utilizing more labor-saving equipment. In the Republic of China's booming economy, it is increasingly difficult to find enough workers for such part-time employment as cane cutting. Large and costly cane cutting machines now harvest much of the crop. Company machines cut privately owned plantings at cost.

The Taiwan narrow-gauge sugar cane railroad system long has been a source of fascination for railroad "buffs" and a major convenience for many rural communities on the island. Like railroads in the United States, it is shrinking. It centers around the sugar refineries and spreads out like a huge spider web.

At the height of the harvest, little trains pulled by diesel locomotives come rolling into the factories with their cars piled high with cane, As a convenience, where other services are not readily available, the sugar cane railroad serves the local population by carrying freight and passengers, The system once handed 22 million passengers and about 6 million tons of private freight a year. It still has more track than the government-owned railroad.

In recent years, better roads and equipment have led to increased use of trucks and trailers for transporting cut cane from fields to mills, But it will be a long while, if ever, before the little trains of the sugar cane railroad are phased out completely. About 2,500 kilometers of track is still in use in the sugar country of Taiwan,

The process of manufacturing cane sugar - closely paralleling the making of sugar from beets - starts with the cutting of the cane into small pieces and grinding it into smaller bits. Then it is boiled and pressed three times to extract all the juice. Lime is added to the resulting dark brown syrup in a process which originated in Egypt more than 1,000 years ago, Lime and carbon dioxide gas are added in a system developed late The additives cause impurities to settle to the bottom of the tanks. Further cooking and filtering plus rapid whirling in centrifugal machines separates the granulated sugar from the molasses, In the newer mills, most of the processes are automated,

About 70 per cent of the production, an almost all of that exported, is in the form of raw sugar, This is a coarse, dark brown product favored by those following "natural foods" diet in the United States and elsewhere. Raw sugar is mainly used for further refining by mills in the countries of consumption, Taiwan sugar goes principally to Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United States, Hongkong and countries of the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Rather coarse "plantation white" sugar used mainly by canneries and other commercial food processors comes from 8 of the 2, Taiwan sugar mills.

Henry Chen told us that most of the white fine grain sugar used in beverages and by households of the Republic of China is produced by several smaller privately owned refineries.

Other sugar products of the company include cube sugar, powdered sugar and brown sugar. But that is only the beginning.

After the juice is pressed from the sugar cane, the residue is called bagasse. It is about 25 per cent of the volume of cane milled - a mixture of pith, fiber and a considerable amount of water. In earlier times it was immediately conveyed to the plant furnaces to help fuel the refining processes. More than half of the bagasse from Taiwan sugar plants still is burned in the refineries. But more furnaces are being converted to the burning of coal or oil to save the cane residue for more valuable purposes. Vapor from the evaporators also is used as a heat source to conserve energy.

Bagasse is the raw material of fiber wallboard, ceiling tile and "particle board" used in construction around the world. Bagasse is also used for poultry litter and as soil and concrete conditioner, It will provide raw material for a new pulp mill, the largest of its kind in the world, a short distance from the Pingtung sugar factory. It was nearly ready to start operations at the time of our visit. Taiwan also turns bagasse pulp into packing boxes. The new plant is the first to turn the dark-colored sugar by-product into thick, white, bleached blanket-like sheets from which high class paper can be made. Using the Kraft sulfate process in which pulp is made from ground-up wood, the new mill will produce about 300 tons of pulp a day. The plant cost more than US$50 million and will employ 500 workers.

Tao Hsein-yung, the deputy manager, told us that about 40 per cent of the new plant's pulp will be marketed in Southeast Asia and the remainder sold to some of the 150 paper mills operating in Taiwan, The island province consumes about 500,000 tons of paper and paper products a year. Local mills have no trouble filling the demand and also export paper, mostly to South-East Asia. Last year they imported some 65,000 tons of pulp from the United States and Canada, in addition to that obtained in Taiwan. The new bagasse pulp plant will ease the drain of foreign exchange, but some pulp imports still will be necessary,

Tao is particularly proud of the waste-disposal facilities of the new plant. There will be almost no water and air pollution. The waste water disposal system is the largest in Taiwan and cost more than US$5 million.

A little known but important sideline activity of the Taiwan Sugar Corporation is land reclamation. Arable land in Taiwan is scarce and almost none is wasted. During the last six years, the sugar company has released more than 2,300 hectares (about 5,750 acres) of its farmland for the construction of highways, industrial zones, schools and hospitals. At the same time, it ha reclaimed more than 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres) of sandy, stony or salt land for its own cane plantings or other uses.

The Chiayi Tidal Land Reclamation Office was set up in 1972 in cooperation with government agencies. It has converted more than 1,000 hectares of saline land into a multi-purpose oasis for use in agricultural, livestock and fishery production.

Not far from the Pingtung sugar and pulp mills we were shown the Pingtung-Lilli Riverbed Reclamation project which, when completed, will yield an additional 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of productive land. Chen Jao-Wang, deputy director of the reclamation district, remarked that in the United States this land probably would be considered too poor to bother with. Before the work started, the site was composed of sand liberally covered with small to medium-sized rocks deposited by the river in high water stages. This land is being reclaimed for sugar production.

The rocks are being removed for highway construction. Dikes and ditches will remove sur­plus water and protect the land from flooding. In due course, the area will be ready for planting to sugar cane. Near the west coast of Taiwan are more than 10,000 additional hectares (25,000 acres) of sandy land which engineers say can be reclaimed and cultivated.

The most valuable sideline in the making of Taiwan sugar is the production each year of some 250,000 tons of molasses. This dark, sweet, strong-tasting syrup has a multitude of uses - in addition to being favored for kitchen use by some who prefer "natural foods."

Molasses is fermented for distilling into some 27,000 kiloliters (about 7,155,000 gallons) of alcohol annually for industrial and me­dicinal purposes. This is sold to the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly.

Molasses is used in the annual production of some 8,000 tons of years for use in livestock and poultry feed. Some yeast is refined for human consumption, including sugar-coated little candies much liked in Taiwan. From molasses comes monosodium glutamate, a flavor enhancer widely used in cooking. A large amount of molasses is used each year as an additive to the more than 200,000 tons of livestock feed produced by Taisugar.

The sugar company produces about 13,000 tons of edible soybean oil annually as a sideline in grinding the beans for inclusion in livestock feed. A large part of the Taiwan soybean supply is imported from the United States.

A relatively small-scale by-product of Taisugar is the manufacture at the town of Puli of tapioca, which is used in desserts and for thickening other foods. The Taiwan product comes from cassava roots and is marketed under the name of sago. A somewhat similar item of tropical countries comes from the pith of the sago palm.

The Taiwan Sugar Corporation's Kaohsiung Agricultural Chemical Works manufactures various kinds of insecticides and weed killers - as well as rat poison. These are made available to small farmers at cost.

Some well-established sideline enterprises have been sold for development by other investors, including a wallboard plant and a pineapple cannery. Looking to the future, Taisugar plans a variety of new enterprises in such fields as meat processing, the manufacture of items from pigskin, the processing of yeasts for human consumption and the manufacture of furfural, an organic chemical used in the manufacture of resins, solvents and nylon.

Taisugar started a cattle feedlot operation in 1970 and began importing beef animals from Australia two years later. We visited a farm near Pingtung where about 1,000 head of cattle are in residence. They are fed mainly cane tops and pith - some of it from huge silos of the type common on farms of the American Midwest­- supplemented by ground grain rations containing molasses. All of the beef produced is for domestic sale. It is planned to increase the feed lot operations to about 4,000 head if market conditions warrant.

Taiwan Sugar Corporation boasts of being the world's largest hog raiser, and this is one of the most remarkable of the company's operations. The company sends to market about 500,000 head of hogs a year. Demand is good and it is planned to increase the number to 700,000 head. The sugar company's part in pork production presently ends when the hogs are sold to meat processing firms. Chinese consumption of pork and pork products has always been high. A considerable part of the production is exported, mainly to Japan in frozen form.

Chang Yung-Chong, chief of the Farm Animal Industry Department of the Taiwan Sugar Corpora­tion's Pingtung District, was our escort on visits to the cattle farm and one of the seven pig farms he manages in the area. Chang studied animal husbandry at an agricultural college in Manchuria and came to Taiwan shortly after the return of the island province to the Republic of China following the victory over Japan in World War II. He has visited the United States several times in recent years as a consultant in large-scale hog raising operations.

The farm we visited had some 30,000 pigs, ranging from newborn piglets weighing hardly a pound to gigantic boars that would tip the scales at a quarter of a ton or more. The farm has 2,500 brood sows each producing three litters of about 10 baby pigs yearly. Breeding is by ar­tificial insemination. The pigs are hybrids, including lines of the familiar American Chester White, Duroc Red and Hampshire black-and-white breeds.

Our first stop at the pig farm was the office, where we exchanged our shoes for sterilized white rubber boots - to protect the pigs from any contamination we might carry onto the premises. Farm workers have to change all their clothes before any contact with the porkers.

The King and Queen of Tonga were due for a royal inspection visit the next day, and Katherine expressed hope that the boots she donned might be worn by Her Majesty on the day following. We waded across a puddle of water white with disinfectant en route to the long sheds where the pigs are housed.

Between the sheds are rankly-growing plantings of sweet potatoes to provide green salad courses for the pigs. The animals are sizable producers of organic fertilizer, both for the sweet potatoes and for aiding the lush growth of the cane fields.

As we approached the first pen, the pigs inside suddenly jumped up. With forefeet on the railings, they began squealing with enthusiasm. Katherine and I, who grew up with pigs on separate Oregon farms, both laughed. However, we soon found that the happy greeting wasn't for us. The pigs had spotted the approach of the feed truck, carrying two tons of rations on the first of its twice-daily visits. An attendant lifted the covers of the feed troughs, and the truck moved slowly down the length of the building, dispensing the mixture of ground corn and soybeans, molasses and vitamins. The pigs, ignoring their visitors, quickly went about the business of making pigs of themselves, just as they were supposed to.

The food formula varies with age groups. The baby pigs nurse their mothers for the first four weeks, then progress from pen to pen, eating more at each stop. Their journey ends at the age of 200 days. Then they are off to market. A truck­-load of sleek, white hogs pulled out from the farm shortly before we left.

Farm workers, some of them women, wielded hoses from between the pens, flushing down the cement floors and also turning the water on the pigs themselves. Each gets a thorough shower bath once a day - and seems to like it. The buildings and their tenants are kept as clean as possible.

When a pig is thirsty, it grabs hold of a stub water pipe at the end of a pen. A valve opens and water flows into its mouth. The drinking fountain shuts off when the pig lets go.

The brood sows are kept until they reach the age of 4 years and a weight of around 400 pounds before they go the way of lard and sausage. The boars are 6 years old and weigh around 600 pounds when they are "retired."

Manager Chang said Taisugar does quite well financially at hog raising, but that for now the same cannot be said of the cattle operation.

We left the farm with the feeling that we had visited 30,000 completely happy pigs. On the way home we stopped at a meat-processing plant which gets its animals from this same farm and bought some ham in its spotless sales room. It tasted as if it had come from a happy pig.