A chance introduction to organic farming that brought Kao Yi-hsin (高一鑫) face to face with draft water buffaloes — used to pull heavy loads — impressed him so much that the 34-year-old is now promoting the practice of plowing fields using the animals instead of machines.
Kao said he moved to Changhua County’s Sijhou Township (溪州) last year to attend the Water Buffalo School, founded by Lee Chun-hsin (李春信), and was given a water buffalo by a local farmer named Hsu Jung (許榮), which he named Lala (拉拉).
Kao began working at the Sijhou Shangshui Eco-friendly Farming organization as a warehouse manager and used his spare time to take Lala to plow fields.
Photo: Yen Hung-chun, Taipei Times
The price to hire a tractor-pulled plow is NT$2,500 (US$81) per fen (about 977m2) of land, but he charged from NT$250 to NT$500 for plowing the same area, Kao said.
Using a water buffalo to plow fields means putting up with the weather and negotiating the animal’s temperament, Kao said, adding that sometimes he earned less than NT$250 per hour.
However, he took on the work not to make money, but to train Lala, he said.
A water buffalo is a partner, not a tool to make money, Kao said, adding that if an animal is treated well and talked to regularly then it reciprocates by offering its loyalty.
There is a lot to learn about water buffalo, as the animals can come down with colds or suffer from heatstroke, and there are certain types of herbal remedies that only the older generation know about, he said.
If the use of the animals died out in Taiwan, the nation would be losing a cultural asset, Kao said.
Kao said he is saving money to tour Taiwan and promote such practices, once Lala is more accustomed to plowing fields.
Kao said he was very lucky to find Sijhou, where local farmers were willing to give him a chance, adding that they not only asked him to help, but also taught him how to better control a water buffalo.
Sijhou Township Office Secretary-General Wu Yin-ning (吳音寧) said Kao’s willingness to promote the culture of plowing farmland with water buffalo should be welcomed by the public.
In a 2015 report in the Chinese-language United Daily News, Tainan official Chou Chih-hsun (周志勳) was quoted as saying that Tainan had 273 draft water buffaloes in 2009, but the number had dropped to 99 in 2015.
There were 19 water buffaloes in Yunlin County, the majority of which were at least 15 years old, Chou said, adding that while Pingtung County still had 236 of the animals, most of them were not used for plowing.
FATAL FIRE: The health department is trying to contact the inspector who visited the site of the illegal nursing home to ask why they did not advise follow-up checks The Taipei City Government yesterday said that a health department inspector last year had visited the site of a long-term care facility in Neihu District (內湖) after receiving a report questioning its status. A fire broke out at the facility on Tuesday afternoon, killing three people. The Taipei Fire Department said that it received a report about a fire on the first floor of a four-story residential building on Kangning Road Sec. 1 at 2:38pm on Tuesday, firefighters arrived at 2:43pm and the fire was put out by 3:07pm. The firefighters found three men in beds and rushed them to hospital for
Taipei City Councilor Wang Hao (王浩) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Monday called for security improvements to the MRT, as fare evasion has increased more than 13-fold on the metropolitan railway system over the past five years. Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has spoken out against fare evasion and other contraventions of MRT regulations, but since he took office in 2015 the number of contraventions has more than doubled, Wang said, adding that there were 537 cases in 2015 compared with 959 last year. A video was posted to YouTube in June showing people how to evade paying a fare,
THE CHINA CONNECTION: As Beijing’s aggression increases, so does Taiwanese consciousness, making a new constitution imperative, Hsu Wei-chun said If the nation is to ratify a new constitution, it must first end any illusions about the current document’s relevance to Taiwan, an academic told a forum in Taipei yesterday. For the constitutional revisionist movement to succeed, it needs public enthusiasm, the right timing and a clear plan of action, Chung Yuan Christian University associate professor Hsu Wei-chun (徐偉群) told attendees at the event titled “Imagining a New Constitution for a New Era,” which was organized by the National Taiwan University Graduate Student Association. The Constitution exists under the “one China” framework and has little relevance to Taiwan, Hsu said, adding that
Yuchi Township (魚池) fishers have appealed to the Nantou County Government for help in dealing with an invasive fish species in Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), where it has devastated the local ecosystem. Fishers at Sun Moon Lake have been using electrofishing in an attempt to eliminate the giant snakehead fish — found in Africa and Southeast Asia — but they have struggled to keep up with the growing population of the species, which breeds during September and October, the county government said on Monday. The county has contacted researchers at National Tsing Hua University, saying it hoped they could come up
RSS