The Council of Agriculture will subsidize installation of vacuum cooling devices to help prevent vegetable prices from being affected by market closures, council Deputy Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday.
The coolers should help farmers’ groups extend the shelf life of their vegetable harvests.
Vegetable prices dropped drastically nationwide starting late last month after Taipei’s two fruit and vegetable wholesale markets were closed for 11 days between Feb. 16 and Wednesday last week.
Vegetables sold at the two markets, totaling 485,570 tonnes last year, make up about one-third of the nation’s total amount.
The council and the Taipei City Government early this month began arguing after members of the public asked who should be blamed for the extended closures, highlighting a power struggle between Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co general manager Wu Yin-ning (吳音寧), who was recommended by the council, and city officials.
The council on Monday last week introduced a series of measures to boost vegetable sales and succeeded in keeping vegetable prices above NT$18 per kilogram when the two markets reopened on Thursday last week after a three-day closure.
Local vegetable storage systems have a lot of room for improvement and the council will subsidize the installation of vacuum cooling devices, which are common in Japan’s markets, Chen said.
Wu should also improve her communication with the marketing company staff, Chen said, adding that people’s working manners can vary.
The council has been encouraging agricultural associations, cooperatives and production groups to install coolers by covering half of their cost, Agriculture and Food Agency Deputy Director-General Su Mao-shiang (蘇茂祥) said separately, adding these groups can also seek subsidies from local governments.
Such devices are not common enough, although they have proven helpful during the market closures, and the council would work harder to persuade more groups to install them, especially in Yunlin County, Su said.
In a self-assessment released on Friday last week, the council said it should have persuaded the Taipei City Government to reduce the number of market closure days, and it failed to recognize the volume of vegetables grown in warmer weather.
The council would work to decentralize vegetable trading by establishing diversified marketing channels and it would advise local governments not to close wholesale markets for three consecutive days, it said in the report.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift