President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been in office for six years, and the situation the nation’s farmers find themselves in is worse than it was six years ago.
Not only is the price of agricultural production increasing steadily, farmers are constantly worried that high-quality farmland will be forcibly expropriated and the government will open the domestic agricultural market without warning, which could have a heavy impact on their overall quality of life.
Furthermore, Ma has grown increasingly out of touch with public opinion since his re-election.
If Ma wants to make a breakthrough on the cross-strait economic front during his final two years in office, he first needs to take care of agriculture and win the support of farmers before being able to bring Taiwan into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or other free-trade agreements which would allow the nation’s economy to advance.
Here are a few suggestions for what should be done in terms of the agricultural sector.
First, the government should ensure that agricultural technology is not leaked overseas. The agricultural sector is mainly composed of small-scale farmers who rely on technology and new varieties of agricultural products created by farmers and research and testing centers to gain an advantage.
This is what allows Taiwan’s domestic agricultural products to compete with overseas agricultural products which are produced at lower production costs.
At present, the agricultural authorities are encouraging the transfer abroad of whole plants containing core agricultural technology, when only big corporations and companies have the financial ability to purchase this technology, not the average small-scale farmer.
Once this technology ends up overseas, big business can use cheaper local human and natural resources, leverage larger consumer markets and then use Taiwan’s unique agricultural technology to produce large volumes of so-called “Taiwanese” agricultural products.
Not only does this mean that the price of these products are more competitive than Taiwanese agricultural products, it will also greatly reduce Taiwan’s chances of exporting its own products. When this happens, it will have a heavy impact on the nation’s agriculture industry, and food sovereignty and safety will also be threatened.
This is something that should be guarded against carefully. The Japanese government for example does not export special varieties of fruit such as Aomori apples, the unique mango variety known as “eggs of the sun” and Japanese cantaloupe, and then hand over the technology used in their production to other countries because doing so would create competitors.
Second, the government should do more to open up international markets for Taiwanese products. Apart from the export of agricultural products to China, which accounts for 18 percent of Taiwan’s gross export value, exports have been less than ideal.
The government is promoting the idea of Taiwan joining regional trade groups, but policy should not only focus on decreasing tariffs or creating business opportunities for businesses.
Ma should also request that the necessary government departments use multilateral trade negotiations to remove tariffs and non-tariff barriers for Taiwan’s high-quality agricultural products and use this as a way of increasing the international market for these products, thus increasing the incomes of farmers.
This is the only way to stop the resistance that comes from the agricultural sector. Especially now as we are slowly approaching the era of the Internet of Things — where objects, animals or people are directly connected to and identifiable via the Internet — the international marketing of agricultural products will start to use new modes and this will present the marketing of Taiwan’s agricultural products with new opportunities.
The government should make good use of existing advantages and invite academics and experts to work together on integrating our certification for agricultural products and thereby come up with safety certification standards and labeling for agricultural products that can be used with all of our regional economic partners.
That would give Taiwan’s agricultural products more added-value and nullify the disadvantages caused to the agricultural sector by joining such trade organizations.
Third, communication and interaction with farmers need to be strengthened. When it comes to promoting international trade cooperation agreements, the government knows full well that agriculture represents not only a form of resistance, but also a bargaining chip.
Without conducting detailed assessments and coming up with appropriate response measures, conducting the necessary adjustment and integration between the related ministries and without communicating adequately with farmers — who such agreements affect most of all — in order to build a consensus before entering into trade agreements with other countries, all that will remain for the government once such an agreement is completed is to allocate reimbursements to make up for things.
It is therefore little wonder that those involved in agriculture have criticized the authorities in charge of only being concerned with a capitalist style of agriculture instead of average small-scale farmers.
If we look at how the government allowed the importation of US beef containing residue of the leanness-enhancing agent ractopamine, amendments to the small landlords and big tenant-farmers program, the huge changes to policies for planting trees on uncultivated land, the cutting of fallow land incentives by half and the new farmers’ insurance system, we will see that government communication with farmers has been lacking, as has patience and sincerity.
Taiwan Affairs Office Vice Minister Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中) of China was able to mingle and get along with domestic farmers when he visited them at their farms, so why can our own officials not do the same?
Finally, the pace of agricultural reforms needs to be increased. Sixty-three percent of the NT$130.9 billion (US$4.35 billion) that the government allocates to the annual agricultural budget — NT$84.4 billion — goes toward welfare payments for farmers. This causes a crowding out effect on other types of funding, slows down the pace of restructuring of the agricultural industry and is of no help when it comes to increasing incomes for those involved in agriculture.
Also, given that Taiwan must deal with trade liberalization, brave reforms on many out-dated agricultural policies must be made in areas such as inappropriate agricultural subsidies, the large amounts of farmland laying idle in the nation, the problems caused by a large number of “fake farmers,” the loss of a large amount of high-quality farmland and cash payments for agricultural technology transfers.
However, such things involve heavily vested interests and there have been strong reactions against reform in these areas. Ma should give his administrative departments the crucial support they need so that reforms do not finish before they have had any real effect.
Du Yu is chief executive officer of the Chen-Li Task Force for Agricultural Reform.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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