At the end of 1949, the Republic of China faced the increasing food demand of the huge population and the problem of foreign exchange shortage after they withdrew to Taiwan. In the same time, Taiwan was involved in the international food system which formed in the 1950s. The government endow food multiple tasks to response the domestic ruling needs and changes in the international market. Food is not only an important resource for the government to stabilize people, but also an important financial tool and diplomatic resource to meet the needs of the country's construction. This article uses government documents, personal files, official publications, investigation reports, diary, and oral material to explore how the three structural factors, which include "financial operation of independent economies", "interaction of multiple actors" , and "the operation of the domestic and international market", influenced the formation and transformation of Taiwan's food regime in the post-war period, and further explained how the operation of the system would affect the power structure and agricultural development of the Grain Bureau.
The Taiwan’s food regime in the post-war period experienced four stages: "the inheritance and transformation of the wartime food regime (1945-1949)", "the exploration and establishment of the extractive food regime (1950-1953)", "the implementation and regularization of the extractive food regime (1954-1968)", and "the disintegration and transformation of the extractive food regime (1960s-1974)". Because of the transformed of the food regime from the "extractive type" to "subsidy type" was constrained by many objective factors, rulers need to explore and adjust constantly to adapt the situation. The rulers could create a complete set of food management systems to face the changes of the political and economic situation only if they reform and develop the existing food system constantly and try to establish a new one under the influence of structural factors such as "financial operation of independent national economies", "interaction between different administrative agencies and stakeholders", and "influence of the United States under the Cold War era."
Under the operation of the food regime, the Grain Bureau has shown the characteristics of state-owned grain merchants. The Grain Bureau not only monopolizes the exclusive right of fertilizers selling, but also the export of Taiwanese rice. Besides, they determine the ratio of the fertilizer-rice bartering. Cutting off the relationship between the ratio of fertilizer-rice bartering and the export price of Taiwanese rice and the import price of fertilizers caused farmers unable to share the huge profits brought by the export of Taiwanese rice. At the same time, the Grain Bureau manipulated the ratio in the fertilizer-rice bartering system to pass on the loss of military grain to farmers, and even monopolized profits when the high price of rice was exported. For this reason, the Grain Bureau obtains a lot of surplus every year, not only to make up for the burden of supporting the military financial structure, but also to accumulate considerable assets.
Due to the small area of cultivated land, Taiwan’s agriculture is dominated by small-scale agricultural mode. Although it has excellent cultivation techniques, which has increased the output per unit area, the production cost is higher. The limitations of the mode have appeared at the late Japanese rule period, but the food regime driven by the domestic and international situation after the war has made Taiwanese rice still have market demand, masking the fact that commodities are not competitive enough in the international market. When the domestic and international market demand is reduced, resulting in overproduction, the rulers must not only consolidate the foundation of the rule, but also guarantee the farmers' income and maintain the food self-sufficiency rate. These factors have led the government to implement the rice price support program, but it also caused farmers to rely on subsidy policies, reducing farmers’ ability to respond to market changes.