The Netherlands Trade and Investment Office plans to hold a seminar next week to share its experiences with local counterparts on how the WTO presents more opportunities than obstacles for farmers, a senior Dutch official said yesterday.
"The Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products, and we are still willing to open our markets to the world," said Menno Goedhart, the Netherlands Trade and Investment Office's representative in Taiwan.
"We realize it is a painful process and that there are hundreds of thousands of small farmers in Taiwan who will have to change, but Taiwan can learn from the Netherlands and help its farmers in the transition period," he said.
The high-profile seminar is one in a series of three trade and investment events organized by the Dutch next week.
The Netherlands' most senior international trade representative -- Dirk Bruinsma, director-general of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- is expected to lead a 20-member mission to take part in the events.
The Netherlands leads the world in the flower industry and can offer advice on how to improve this sector.
"Flowers picked in Israel and Kenya are auctioned in the Netherlands the same evening and sold fresh the next day in South America, for example," Goedhart said. "Taiwan can see how we do this and learn from it."
Taiwan should also protect through patents some of its locally produced unique fruits and create a global market for them.
The nation already exports US$3.2 billion in produce annually, according to government statistics.
The government's man responsible for implementing WTO regulations is scheduled to speak at the Dutch seminar.
"After we joined the WTO last year we have been trying to restructure our agricultural production as in the future markets will be liberalized," Wang Ming-lai (
"Therefore we need to produce more products that can compete on world markets," he said.
One area of agriculture that is strong is orchid production. Taiwan exports about 14,000 lady orchids annually, earning about NT$360 million.
"We are encouraging our farmers to produce more high-value, high-technology products," Wang said, citing the successes to date of orchid, mango and wax-apple growers.
But Wang sounded a warning about forcing farmers to change too quickly.
"We hope in the new round of WTO discussions that new members, especially those with smaller-scale agriculture, can open their markets more gradually, not drastically," he said.
Replacing fruit crops and bringing new orchards to maturity can take up to 20 years, Wang said, as can replacing livestock, whereas grain and root vegetable crops can be replaced within months.
"Only with a high-tech, high unit-value system can we compete, and we are very competitive already with orchids and sub-tropical fruits. We hope with the WTO we can produce more and increase exports," he said.
The one-day International Conference on Taiwan-Netherlands Relations in the WTO Context is scheduled to take place next Friday at the National Chengchi University.
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