In an attempt to quell the escalating Dapu Borough (大埔) farmland expropriation controversy Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) called a press conference with Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻), Minister of Agriculture Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) and Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) on Thursday.
During the conference, Wu declined to promise that more agricultural areas would not be seized for future development projects, but he did say that food security is an area of national strategic importance.
While Wu stopped short of addressing Taiwan’s food security from a strategic perspective, he has pointed out a crucial issue — one that has raised grave concern around the globe.
Food security is an issue that needs to be tackled on a strategic level, but is often overlooked by government officials preoccupied with economic growth in the industrial sector.
Given its importance, what is the government’s food security strategy?
An examination of the agriculture white paper issued by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) during the 2008 presidential campaign shows the administration’s strategy is far from comprehensive
The white paper says: “[The campaign’s] agricultural development goals are to develop healthy, efficient and sustainable agriculture for the people,” with an aim to raise production efficiency, focus on food safety and achieve co-existence with the environment.
Most of the white paper is dedicated to either pledges to improve farmers’ living standards or criticism of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) agriculture policy.
The annual administrative guidelines drawn up by the Executive Yuan since the Ma administration took office in 2008 do mention the idea of maintaining food security, but only briefly.
The Executive Yuan says in its guidelines that it will “revive fallow farmland and adjust the production and sale structure of rice in a bid to ensure food security.”
Unfortunately, that is where all mention of food security ends.
There are not even independent sections outlining the government’s food security strategy in the Executive Yuan’s annual administrative goals.
This lack of a comprehensive strategy is alarming because, statistically speaking, Taiwan is over-reliant on imported food.
The Agriculture and Food Agency’s latest data show that domestic production of crops, including rice, wheat and corn, in 2007 totaled 1.18 million tonnes of Taiwan’s total consumption of 7.6 million tonnes of these crops.
A similar situation is found in the domestic production and supply of crops like potatoes, sweet potatoes and others, with imports of these root vegetables supplying up about 95 percent of domestic needs.
Wu said during a meeting with concerned academics and farmers representatives on Tuesday that being self-sufficient in food supply should be made a national strategy.
Although he made the remark to salvage the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s image in the wake of the Dapu farmland seizure controversy, hopefully the idea of developing a comprehensive strategic food security policy will become more than just words.
Maybe it’s time for the government to propose a white paper detailing its food security policy that addresses the strategic importance of this issue instead of just trying to score political points.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations