The nation’s agriculture and aquaculture sectors suffered losses worth hundreds of millions of New Taiwan dollars due to one of the strongest cold fronts in years, with legislators calling on the government to accelerate efforts to assess damage and provide compensation.
The cold spell has caused irreparable damage to 1,583 hectares of crops, with strawberries suffering the most damage, the Council of Agriculture said.
Mass die-offs of fish were reported in central and southern municipalities, with Tainan bearing the brunt, as the city alone suffered losses of NT$231.86 million (US$6.88 million) in damaged fish stock, especially milkfish.
Photo: CNA
Losses as of yesterday totaled NT$404.81 million, with the aquaculture sector registering the heaviest losses, at NT$327.08 million.
The council on Monday declared all cities and counties in the nation as disaster areas, and farmers who sustained losses of more than 20 percent of their crops or stock can apply for a cash grant to resume farming, while damage in the fishery industry was expected to continue to increase.
Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) — who quit the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and joined the People First Party (PFP) before the elections — said prices of vegetables in the past few days were appreciably higher than in the same period last year, while demand would continue to increase ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, so the government should set up measures to stabilize the market and maintain reasonable prices.
Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅) said the damage wrought by cold and snow in mountainous areas had not been seen in decades, and the government should enact special compensation measures for damaged crops grown at higher altitudes, which provide a livelihood to many Aborigines.
PFP legislator-elect Chou Chen Hsiu-hsia (周陳秀霞) said 90 percent of the fishing ponds in Tainan’s Syuejia District (學甲), or about 1,800 hectares of ponds, were damaged, and salvaged fish could only be left to rot because of insufficient freezer storage facilities.
Chou Chen called on the government to place more freezers in fish farming regions to reduce losses.
Agriculture and Food Agency Deputy Director Chen Chun-yen (陳俊言) said the diminishing supply of vegetables was largely due to delays in harvests rather than weather damage, and that vegetables were damaged as much as fruit trees, which suffered the most damage.
The damage to milkfish stocks would not have a significant impact on the supply of aquatic products, as the shortage could be made up by other fish species and ocean fisheries, Chen said.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
NUMBERs IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
RSS