The nation should use advanced technology to stimulate the development of the local agricultural sector and keep its core technology and expertise in Taiwan to maintain its competitiveness, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said yesterday.
At a seminar on organic living to mark Taiwan Organic Agriculture Day in Taichung City, Wang predicted organic produce would grow increasingly competitive over the long term given that global resources are becoming scarce.
Oil is one such resource, Wang said, citing its rise to US$80 per barrel, even though the global economy has yet to recover.
He said although Taiwan is considered a “developing” country, only about 2,400 hectares, or about 0.2 percent of the nation’s farmland, are organically farmed because of a lack of consumer consciousness.
That is less than the 2 percent of land organically farmed in South Korea and far below the higher percentages of land devoted to organic farming in Japan, the EU, New Zealand and Australia, Wang said.
Regulations governing organic agriculture have been included in the Agricultural Products Production and Certification Screening Management Law (農產品生產及驗證管理法), which was passed by the Legislative Yuan two years ago and came into effect this year, he said.
The Council of Agriculture has also set a goal of increasing the country’s organic farmland to 5,000 hectares by the end of this year, and, as a result, the organic agriculture sector is calling this year the first year of Taiwanese organic agriculture, Wang added.
In light of the outflows of Taiwan’s advanced agricultural technology and superior agricultural strains to China in recent years, Wang said that Taiwan’s agricultural sector should keep its core technology in Taiwan to avoid losing its competitive edge.
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:
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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