Agriculture needs to market products

The newly appointed head of the Council of Agriculture needs to focus on strengthening marketing of the nation's farming products overseas after he takes up his post next week, pundits said yesterday.

"With a lifelong career in the agricultural sector, the new agriculture council head -- Lee Chin-lung (李金龍) -- will quickly settle into the new job," said Wu Jung-chieh (吳榮杰), an agricultural economics professor at National Taiwan University.

Taiwan's predominance of family farms often lack economies of scale and are inefficient.

"The new chairman will be facing challenges such as how to encourage strategic alliances to upgrade farmers' competitiveness and how to boost agricultural exports," Wu said.

Lee will also continue to work on eliminating non-trade barriers such as quarantine restrictions with Japan and the US, said Yan Jian-sian (顏建賢), secretary-general of Taiwan Agro-Fighters United, an organization composed of farmers' and fishermen's associations.

Japan is the top destination of Taiwan's farm exports, accounting for 33.5 percent, followed by Hong Kong's 24.5 percent and the US' 12.4 percent.

Lee, 55, director of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, was named on Wednesday as new chairman of the agricultural council.

His predecessor, Fan Chen-tsung (范振宗), quit the post on Monday after 120,000 farmers and fishermen demonstrated in Taipei over the weekend to protest the government's cleanup plan for grassroots credit cooperatives.

Lee, the third person to take up the post under the Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) administration, will face a host of challenges.

Taiwan's recent WTO entry, for example, requires that tariffs on agricultural imports be lowered, placing pressure on local farmers.

"Lee has been working in governmental-level agricultural agencies for 23 years," Yan said. "He has a lot of experience in quarantine, technological assistance and agricultural promotion."

"Because farmers generally lack the trade-related experience, Lee is likely to begin working on enlarging potential markets for our agricultural products abroad," he said.

Contributions from the agriculture sector to Taiwan's gross domestic product have been on the decline over the past five decades, dropping from 32.2 percent in 1952 to 1.91 percent last year, according to Ruby Yeh (葉寶玉), a section chief at the agriculture council's international cooperation department.

In addition, the growth rate of agricultural production has slowed, falling from 7.3 percent in 1961 to minus 1.3 percent last year, Yeh said. Both fruit and vegetable exports are also on the decline, she said.

Taiwan shipped about US$80 million worth of fruit including bananas, lichees, mangoes, pineapples and guava, in 1991, but the figure dropped to US$30 million last year, according to council statistics. Vegetable exports stood at US$34 million in 1991 and slid to US$11 million last year.

To boost exports, Taiwanese farmers need to adopt new marketing strategies, such as conducting surveys of consumption patterns, improving product packaging and developing high value-added products, Yeh said.