The government must take an inventory of how many key agricultural species and technologies are still indigenous to Taiwan and hold on to them to safeguard the superiority of the Taiwan brand on the international market, academics said recently.
Along with the rapid growth in cross-strait exchanges and China’s establishment of the so-called “Taiwanese innovative farming parks,” the techniques that have led to the development and production of Taiwanese agricultural wonders, such as orchids, golden diamond pineapples, golden mangoes and Oolong tea, have been exported to China, seriously undermining Taiwan’s share of the international market.
Chen Lee Agricultural Reform research team executive director Tu Yu (杜宇) said Taiwan has limited agricultural land compared with China and cannot count on mass production to sustain economies of scale.
That is why Taiwan should take advantage of its self-developed techniques and products to form the core of its agricultural exports, Tu said, adding that about 70 to 80 percent of the products, which are not limited to flowers and fruit, but also include fish farming, found in China’s “innovative farming parks” were from Taiwan.
The parks, which have been officially approved by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and Ministry of Agriculture, provide land, tax incentives and assistance with software and hardware development, as well as discounts on joint ventures. Those incentives are seen as a means to encourage the transfer of Taiwan’s techniques and experienced workers to China.
Tu said the government should consider imposing criminal sentences on people caught smuggling techniques and seeds or shoots to China.
There were only five such parks in China when President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) assumed office in May 2008, but that number increased to 20 in 2009 and to 25 at the end of last year.
One of these parks, Zhangping Yongfu, markets itself as the “Chinese Alishan” (阿里山) and has become the largest settlement of Taiwanese-style Oolong tea in China.
Encouraged by the success of these parks, the Fujian Province Agricultural Department said on Monday last week that it was pushing for the creation of three national-level innovative parks in China.
In a report released in February, Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture said inspections of the parks in November last year showed that they were systematically importing top-grade products from Taiwan, as well as personnel and techniques to enhance and upgrade China’s traditional agriculture.
The report said that everything from management and shoots were imported from Taiwan at the Zhangpu Park in Fujian and that most of the agricultural products planted there were top-of-the line fruit, including golden pineapples, black pearl modifications of bell fruit, lychee, the modified Japanese persimmon kaki, dragon fruit with red fruit meat and pineapple-flavored custard apples, as well as aiwen, yuwen and golden mangoes.
The current focus at the Zhangpu Park was on dragon fruit, the report said.
Chinese fruit growers are not well educated on product rights protection, the report said, adding that some could mass produce varieties of Taiwanese fruit from only a branch or shoot off the original tree.
Oolong tea species and techniques for making the tea have been fully exported to the parks, and some tea leaves are even sold back to Taiwan through Vietnam or in crates that may have found their way back into Taiwan via the “small three links,” the report said.
Kuo Hua-jen (郭華仁), of National Taiwan University’s department of agriculture, accused the government of being lax in its management of the issue. One reason could be that former Council of Agriculture minister Paul Sun (孫明賢), who also doubles as honorary chairman of the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center, is the primary adviser to the parks.
Kuo said this lax attitude has made it easy for people to smuggle shoots and seeds, as well as techniques and technology, out of the country.
Agriculture and Food Agency Secretary-General Hsu Han-ching (許漢卿) said there are only seven types of seeds and shoots that needed documentation for export: bananas, pomegranates, tea, soy beans, sugarcane, fungi and mushrooms, and bamboo shoots. All other types can pass through customs unhindered.
As to whether the policy concerning cross-strait agricultural technique exchange was too lax, the Council of Agriculture only said it would prohibit core species and technologies researched and developed by the state-run Agricultural Research and Extension Stations from being exported to China.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
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