Following two days of protests on agricultural issues, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday pledged to set up a task force to resolve problems in the sector, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) criticized the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) record on the matter when it was in office.
Speaking in Changhua County, Ma said that within a week he would establish a task force and put forward solutions on the controversial Land Expropriation Act (土地徵收條例) and the distribution of water resources, two key issues raised by thousands of farmers, academics and farmers’ rights activists on Ketagalan Boulevard over the weekend.
In a hastily called press conference yesterday morning, officials denied the government was neglecting the agricultural sector, a claim made by the DPP, which sided with the protesters and used the opportunity to criticize the government’s agricultural policy.
Photo: CNA
Despite its limited contribution to the economy — less than 2 percent of GDP — the government has not overlooked the agricultural sector, Council of Agriculture (COA) Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) said, adding that the ministry’s budget this year accounted for more than 6 percent of the national budget, higher than the 3 percent to 5 percent seen in Japan and South Korea.
The government has set up a goal of increasing Taiwan’s level of food self-sufficiency from 32 percent to 40 percent, he said.
As for water, only 1.6 percent of water for agricultural uses has been transferred to industrial sectors or for commercial use, Chen said, adding that this is only done in winter when the agricultural demand for water is lower, Chen said.
Ma, who is seeking re-election in January, has made efforts to help farmers by exploring exports to China and increasing the government’s purchase of farm produce, campaign spokeswoman Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏) said.
“If [DPP Chairperson and presidential candidate] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) opposes agricultural exports to China, she may as well make that one of the platforms of her presidential campaign,” Lee said.
Lee said there were 14 cases of supply greatly exceeding demand for agricultural produce during the DPP administration from 2000 until 2008 and at least two cases during Tsai’s tenure as vice premier from 2006 to 2007.
“Those problems were not solved at the time,” she said.
The KMT’s offensive came in the wake of meetings by Tsai with residents in three southern municipalities, during which she focused on increasing subsidies, sustainable development and a law to better protect farmers’ rights.
Capitalizing on the sit-in over the weekend, as well as recent complaints against the Ma administration by fruit farmers concerned about low prices for produce, Tsai pledged to overturn existing farming polices to make the industry more viable and sustainable.
“We need a more responsible president,” Tsai told farmers in Tainan’s Liuying District (柳營). “One that understands the needs of agricultural workers and who will stand on the same side as the people.”
Donning a straw hat and carrying a bushel of rice, Tsai said: “After all, the government’s role should be to truly take care of farmers, not just make remarks to the press,” in response to Ma’s recent comments promising to prioritize the industry.
The controversy, sparked after banana farmers in Pingtung County complained to the president about record-low fruit prices on July 9, could end up proving to be a boost to the DPP’s election chances.
The government has pledged to stabilize fruit prices, with Ma ordering the Council of Agriculture to propose an overall solution regarding water distribution, slumping produce prices and concerns about the expropriation of farmland that led to Saturday’s sit-in.
Tsai said a future DPP -administration would conduct a thorough review of public resource distribution in a manner that would help stabilize rural development and seek to make agriculture and value-added goods a new focus of the country’s economy.
“The DPP will change the old and dated idea of using agriculture to develop the industrial sector and raise the role farming plays in the national economy,” Tsai said, adding that she would support the proposed basic agricultural law bill, which aims to revitalize the sector.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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