The government’s farmland revitalization project, which is set to begin in January, is estimated to revitalize 45,000 hectares of farmland and provide 100,000 job opportunities by 2016, Council of Agriculture Minister (COA) Chen Bao-ji (陳保基) said yesterday.
The council said the project would target fallow farmland, transform the industry’s labor structure and expand agriculture to increase the nation’s food self-sufficiency ratio.
“We have 50,000 hectares of farmland that lie fallow each year or are not producing any crops within the year,” Chen said, adding that the policy would exclude owners of such farmland from receiving fallow farmland subsidies, unless they make use of the farmland for at least one season per year.
Photo: CNA
While landowners can still apply for one season of fallow farmland subsidies every year, he encouraged farmers to grow import substitution crops, export crops, organic crops or “regional specialty” crops that are easier to sell.
In response to many farmers’ concerns about reduced incomes as a result of the policy, the council said if landowners could, for example, grow corn for animal feed or soybeans, they would still be able to collect a NT$45,000 (US$1,550) subsidy for every hectare of contracted farmland.
When combined with the additional income from selling the corn or soybeans, farmers would earn more under the new policy than from the fallow farmland subsidies, the council said.
Should landowners be unable to manage their land alone, the council said they could lease their land to other farmers through local farmers’ associations.
Doing so would provide incomes for senior farmers, while providing young farmers or farming groups a chance to pursue farming, the council said.
“We hope to increase the value of Taiwan’s farmland and recover the dignity of agriculture through this policy,” Chen said.
The goal is to revitalize about 45,000 hectares of farmland and increase the food self-sufficiency ratio by 1.4 percentage points — from the current 33.5 percent to 34.9 percent in 2016, Chen said, adding that the policy is estimated to increase output value by about NT$8.8 billion and create about 100,000 job opportunities.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,