The Council of Agriculture (COA) will increase the amount of low-interest loans offered to orchid farms by as much as 25 times to help the industry recover more quickly, an official said yesterday.
As orchids are high-value crops that require expensive equipment for farming, including greenhouses and air-conditioning, “the COA has agreed to sharply raise the amount of low-interest loans offered to orchid farmers to shorten the time needed to help the industry get back on its feet,” said Chen Wen-te (陳文德), director-general of the council’s Agriculture and Food Agency.
“Orchid greenhouses in Tainan County that were devastated by Typhoon Morakot covered 13 hectares, making up about 10 percent of the nation’s orchid plantations,” Chen said.
Losses from Typhoon Morakot have reached NT$120 million for the orchid farms in Tainan County, where most of the nation’s orchid farms are located, Chen said.
COA Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) visited Tainan County yesterday to meet orchid farmers, boost their morale and formulate post-disaster strategies.
The council has also formed a panel of experts to discuss how to restore the nation’s orchid industry.
With the amended regulation, low-interest loans issued according to the Agricultural Natural Disaster Relief Regulations (農業天然災害救助辦法) for orchid farmers will be increased from NT$1.2 million per hectare, to NT$10,000 per ping (3.3m²). As a hectare is equivalent to 3,025 ping, the change translates to a 25-fold increase from NT$397 per ping to NT$10,000.
The announcement was the latest in a series of moves by the council to help industries devastated by the typhoon.
The council announced on Sunday that to help the nation reclaim its reputation as the “Kingdom of Cultured Grouper,” it would increase loans offered to grouper farmers from NT$1 million per hectare to as much as NT$8 million.
As of yesterday, the amount of total agricultural losses sustained by the nation from damage caused by Morakot had reached NT$16 billion.
With the number continuing to climb, experts said the final figure was likely to top Typhoon Herb’s impact in 1995, which reached NT$18.5 billion.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater