A group of National Taiwan University (NTU) students have put the spirit of Japan’s Shokuiku food education program into practice by transforming the roof of a school building into a real-life version of FarmVille, a social networking game that simulates farming.
Worried by a report that showed that Japanese children were developing poor eating habits, Tokyo enacted the Basic Law on Shokuiku in 2005 aiming to instil the importance of balanced nutrition and food safety among the public — especially among young people — by promoting food education in schools, at home and in the community.
One of the initiative’s guiding principles is to promote locally grown produce, which is what the university students were aiming to do when they struck upon the idea of turning the 60 ping (198m2) roof of an NTU building into a garden.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
The garden has turned out to be a huge success and more than 30 kinds of pesticide-free fruits and vegetables are now being cultivated there.
The idea came to the students when they were put into a group during a class in an elective course titled Innovation and Design of Socio-economic Organizations and tasked with finding a solution to the social problem they cared about the most, said Hsiao Yu-hsin (蕭玉欣), one of the student farmers.
“My classmates and I were most concerned about Taipei’s housing problem, so we asked ourselves: ‘What other purposes can a home serve other than providing a place for its owners to sleep and take showers? Is it feasible to utilize a community’s resources to satisfy the needs of its residents, such as by building a community vegetable garden … or a daycare center?’” Hsiao said.
Hsiao said the group’s interest in the issue was so intense that it did not wane after the course ended and led to them establishing a student club called Jiajiajiu (傢傢久) in an effort to make their ideas reality.
Thanks to a subsidy provided by My Little Wild Campus (大學小革命), a talent cultivation scheme administered by the Ministry of Education, the students were able to execute their plan without having to worry about money.
“When we first started to garden, we thought growing vegetables and fruit would be a piece of cake … but it turns out that even the way in which you water the plants matters significantly,” said Yang Chun-ming (楊淳名), who serves as chief executive of the farming project.
Yang said they got so desperate they even tried out some easy-to-grow crops recommended for beginner gardeners, but even those did not grow fast enough to outpace the pests that consumed them.
Despite the bumpy start, the students continued to devote more time and energy to attending to their garden.
They transferred the plants to elevated planters to prevent them from succumbing to heat and enriched the soil with organic supplements and by covering it with dried leaves.
The group said they made it a point to not use any sort of chemical pesticides.
After they started seeing results, the students began encouraging their junior peers to roll up their sleeves and join in their endeavor.
The NTU group also promoted their Shokuiku-inspired project at a nearby community by offering weekly gardening classes to local residents, who then created a vegetable garden of their own on the roof of their community center.
Hsiao said their short-term goal is to solve two major problems afflicting large cities: insufficient green spaces and declining human-to-human interaction.
“Our long-term plan is to plant a seed in people’s minds that will bring them closer to the soil and help them see the predicaments facing the nation’s agricultural industry so that hopefully, one day, they make better choices when shopping for food,” she said.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard