The Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction: The first five years

By authority of the 1948 ECA China Aid Act Section 407 of Public Law 472 of the 80th U.S. Congress an agreement was entered into by the Government of the United States and the Government of China for the establishment of a Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction which was formally convened on October 1. 1948 in Nanking, China. The Commission was authorized to formulate and carry out a coordinated program for reconstruction in rural areas in China. The Act specified that ten per cent of the Economic Aid to China be used for this rural reconstruction program.

 

A STATEMENT FROM THE CHAIRMAN

By October 1953 we shall have reached another milestone in the history of JCRR. It seems only a short while ago that Dr. Chiang Monlin, Dr. Raymond T. Moyer, Dr. Y. C. James Yen, Dr. John Earl Baker and myself met to convene the first meeting of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction at Nanking, China. on October 1, 1948. The five of us sat down to a challenging and urgent task. We were eager and anxious. The atmosphere was charged with enthusiasm and expectancy. We looked for better and new solutions to the old problems; we wanted to do things that were most helpful to the farmers. It was a concerted American and Chinese effort to find a way to fulfill the felt needs of the rural masses-a joint venture.

T.H. Shen

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In 1948 the Government of the Republic of China took a drastic step to rid the Taiwanese farmer of the burden of paying an exorbitant rental of one-half of the total crop yield for his land. The land reform program reduced the rental to 37.5 per cent of the total annual crop yield assessed on the productivity of each land grade and the tenure was a minimum of six years renewable by tenants consecutively. A total of 152,000 hectares of privately tenanted holdings and 220,000 tenant families respectively were affected.

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Farm lands in Taiwan were fragments of 10 to 15 pieces of irregular and scattered plots without adequate irrigation, drainage and farm roads. A consolidation program has remodeled the original farm plots into 0.25 hectare plots and simultaneously provided means of direct irrigation and communication. A total of 80,000 hectares of farm lands of which more than two thirds were irrigated paddy fields have undergone consolidation.

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Uneven distribution of monthly precipitation and shortage of surface irrigation water occur on Taiwan in early spring and late fall when water is urgently needed in the paddy fields. Ground water pumped from shallow wells as supplementary irrigation was inadequate because of seasonal fluctuations in the water table.

Following an investigation in 1949 and based on the recommendations of a consultant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the first large scale ground water development program in Yunlin Hsien was completed in 1953. With total financial support from the JCRR 252 deep wells were constructed resulting in an increase of 15,975 crop-hectares and an annual increase of brown rice production of 55,543 metric tonnes. The achievement of the Yunlin ground water development program has stimulated interest for the implementation of the same program in Changhua, Kaohsiung, and Pingtung areas.

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Sedimentation and flood damage are severe in Taiwan. Opening up mountainous country due to population pressure has impaired many good watersheds. Illegal and abusive cultivation amounts to about 100,000 hectares. The soil conservation program aimed at conserving the natural resources of soil and water for permanent agriculture and sustaining farm production has been carried out on 25,000 acres of slope farmland.

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To evaluate the fertility status of island-wide cropland, composite soil samples systematically from every 10 hectares in agricultural use have been subjected to soil analysis to determine soil texture, pH, organic matter, available phosphorus and potassium. More than 78,000 soil samples, covering 90 percent of the total cropland, have been collected and analyzed. Results provide the basic information essential to soil improvement programs and fertilization allocation.

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The educational type of agricultural extension work was initiated by JCRR in 1950 and an agricultural extension education system was established in 1952. Special projects include assistance to 3,000 low-income families (with farms of less than 0.5 hectares) by making available low interest production loans, providing wage-earning opportunities, enabling them to improve farming practices, raise more hogs, engage in sideline businesses and offering them necessary services through farm extension activities.

Land reform and rent reform has arrived to China Taiwan. The original idea was to apply it to all of China, but well, those damned Kungs, basically. Taiwan is the only place in China where agricultural productivity is high enough to justify high investment in agricultural reform and where key KMT interest groups don’t hold large interests in tenant farming. So of the U.S. aid money devoted to agricultural reconstruction, a large portion of the money is going to an island which possesses less than 2% of China’s population and 2.5% of its GDP, as well as almost all the attention paid to institutional reform. The new governor, Wei Tao-Ming, with the full support of Agriculture Minister Chiang Ching-Kuo, has embarked on an ambitious program of agricultural rationalization and reform with barely any interference from mainland groups. Rents have been capped, state-owned farmlands sold off, and farm plots reorganized. Wells have been drilled, soil and crop research begun, and educational programs launched.

Irrigation

The JCRR is currently in the process of making a comprehensive survey of groundwater resources on Taiwan, and advising and aiding farmers in the construction of shallow wells to supplement water from rainfall and other surface sources. A preliminary study of the possibility of importing U.S. drilling equipment and technicians in order to drill deep wells in Yunlin county has begun. More importantly, the JCRR in cooperation with the provincial administration has organized the creation of some 17 local Irrigation Associations to manage the usage and apportionment of water resources, all of whom managed in consultation with local landholders.

Rent and Land Reform

[I’m not retyping that lmao, it’s up there somewhere]

Land Management

[I’m not retyping that lmao, it’s up there somewhere]

Research Institutions

US educational and financial aid have allowed for the creation of numerous China-wide research institutions dedicated to the betterment of the little man. Chief among them are the China Agricultural Research Institute, the China Fisheries Research Institute, and the China Provincial Health Research Institute. Under the umbrella of these larger organizations are local Taiwan-based facilities like the Fengshan Tropical Experiment Station, the Taiwan Provincial Seed Testing Laboratory, a Soil Fertility Research Laboratory, the Tainan Fish Culture Station, and an International Seed Exchange Center.

Currently, all of these are dramatically short of Chinese personnel, and gaps have either been filled with personnel in-training or by U.S. contributors. A preliminary class of some 1,500 to-be-JCRR personnel has been sent to the United States for a mix of two and four year degrees in various disciplines related to rural reconstruction.

Other Projects on the Mainland

While progress on the mainland has been considerably more restrained, some good work is still being done. JCRR personnel are engaged one way or another in the reclamation and rehabilitation of some 250,000 hectares of abandoned, exhausted, or virgin slope-land across the Southern Provinces of Guangxi, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou, and Hunan. Across the rest of China, the JCRR is aiding in the restoration of some 5,000,000 hectares of farmland abandoned or ravaged due to the war (though most of the effort is being led by individuals and local authorities). Areas in which the JCRR has provided considerable aid include the deployment of American-supplied machinery for the purposes of restoring wells, clearing overgrowth and debris, and rebuilding dikes and levees, providing skilled personnel to manage local programs to manage soil pH, overseeing the introduction of new varieties of tubers, and providing credit and technical assistance for the deployment of tractors.

One project of interest is the deployment of mechanical roto-tillers throughout China. While their utility is limited to a single task, and they still require human power to move them, they considerably reduce the burden of tilling land, are far more suited for rough land than a tractor, and more importantly, they cost over 10 times less than a tractor (a mid-range US model costs around $200) and require minimal technical knowledge or money for upkeep. The JCRR has deployed several hundred of these machines in test plots throughout Taiwan and Guangxi with excellent results, and plans to support the purchase of several tens of thousands of the machines by 1950.

Future Implementation on the Mainland

Contingent of future successes and continued political stability, the Agriculture Ministry plans to begin a rent-reform and plot rationalization program in the breadbasket province of Sichuan by 1950. Fortunately, Sichuan is under direct ROC control and possesses the densest agglomeration of ROC administrative resources in the country outside of the Shanghai-Nanjing area. The only real barrier to implementation are the local landlords, but Sichuan landlords are already considerably weaker than elsewhere in the country due to the vast number of war-refugee squatters farming in the provinces and the large amount of land nationalized by the government during the war.