A Reserve Granary Established in 1390

Background

Famine policy in the Hongwu entries of the gazetteer is mostly remission: rent remitted in 1370, autumn grain in 1372, both taxes in 1376, half the autumn grain on official land in 1381, and summer and autumn taxes in 1382. Beyond remission, relief against famine required permanent stores, and in the fifth month of 1390 the order to establish reserve granaries reached the counties.

What was done

二十三年庚午，五月，设各县预备仓。八月，遣老人赍钞收籴。 — Kangxi Lishui County Gazetteer, 卷之一·邑纪·二十三年庚午

Translated: In the fifth month of the twenty-third year, reserve granaries were established in each county. In the eighth month, village elders were sent with paper money to buy grain.

The gazetteer records two steps: the granary was established in the fifth month, and in the eighth month laoren, village elders, were sent with paper money to purchase grain for storage.

Consequences

The purpose of the stored grain appears four years later: in the first month of 1394 an order was given to lend reserve-granary grain to the poor, so that relief took the form of a loan rather than a direct issue. In the second month of the same year Lishui also set up a tax office, a salt-certificate inspection office and the Dongba inspection station.

Further granaries followed. Under the Jiajing era the magistrate Wang Congshan built the Xiansi Granary, and in 1567 the magistrate He Yigui rebuilt the Bianmin New Granary, which the gazetteer says the whole county was grateful for, referring the reader to a Record of the Granary.

Uncertainties

First, the gazetteer does not say how many reserve granaries were established in Lishui or where they stood, and the phrase "granaries in each county" can be read either as a general order or as a decision taken county by county.

Second, neither the capacity of the granary nor the quantity of grain purchased is given.

Third, the gazetteer records nothing of the interest charged on the loans, the terms of repayment or any remission, and it does not relate the reserve granary to the later Xiansi and Bianmin granaries.