There could be further exchanges between young farmers in Taiwan and Australia, as the agricultural sectors on both sides share many similarities and challenges, Australian Office in Taipei Representative Catherine Raper said.
“The next generation of farmers will face new challenges but also new opportunities as agricultural practice evolves,” Raper said on Friday.
“With this in mind, we wanted to start a dialogue between our respective young farmers,” said Raper, who initiated an exchange program aimed at bringing mutual benefits to young farmers in both nations.
The two nations’ agricultural industries face similar challenges, including aging rural populations, climate change and the struggle to be more competitive in terms of productivity and profitability in a globalized environment, Raper said.
The office invited two young farmers from Queensland to visit their Taiwanese counterparts earlier this month, Raper said.
Paul Inderbitzin, 30, and David Groves, 28, said the trip was rewarding.
Inderbitzin said he was impressed with the diversity of Taiwanese fruit and the way farmers add value to their produce, for example through processing and Internet sales.
Inderbitzin, who uses drones to monitor crops on his 500-hectare farm, said technology could benefit Taiwanese farmers, as it makes production more efficient.
“The more information I have, the better and faster my decisionmaking,” he said.
Groves said that labor is more of an issue for Australia, as farmers must pay about NT$5,300 per worker per day, which is why the Australian government-led working holiday program — which has attracted 20,000 young Taiwanese to Australia — could be a potential pool of labor.
Groves said he would be involved in a trial program to grow Taiwanese lychees as part of a memorandum of understanding signed between Taiwan and Queensland last year.
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:
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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