Agriculture is one of the key issues concerning the proposed free economic pilot zones, and the same issue will come up in relation to future trade agreements — for example the cross-strait agreement on trade in goods, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). An early response is necessary, otherwise fierce protests will break out and rifts will continue to open up in society.
Some farmers in Taiwan are keen to absorb new knowledge and boldly engage in innovation. Their agricultural products are of high quality and often acquire certification. Quality differentiation enables such products to compete with imported agricultural products that are cheap but may be associated with food safety risks, and some are destined for the export market.
Products such as these are not threatened by the competition that trade liberalization would encourage, but they account for only around 20 percent of Taiwan’s total agricultural output.
Most farmers are limited by factors such as scale of production, capital, technology and markets. They are often affected by imbalances between production and sales, causing prices to fall so low that they may not even be able to cover production costs. They cannot compete with mass imports of low-priced goods from overseas, so they are naturally very worried about liberalization.
This is the true picture of Taiwan’s rural areas today. Hastily cutting import tariffs and opening up domestic markets would have a big impact on the majority of farmers, so it is not without reason that farmers and agricultural pressure groups are strongly opposed to such measures.
“Added value in agricultural production” will be of little help if Taiwan’s farming sector has to bear the impact of wave after wave of liberalization. It will be necessary to thoroughly assist farmers in upgrading and making whatever adaptions are needed.
Agricultural policy reform must start out from national land planning. This involves drawing red lines concerning farmland and regional distribution, in order to ensure food security.
The farmlands in question should not be rezoned for other purposes without going through a strict review procedure. As for short-term subsidies and compensation, although they are indeed necessary, agricultural transition and technical upgrading are more important still.
Issues such as structural adjustments, enhanced competitiveness, higher farming incomes and stronger labor performance in agriculture all need deep-reaching reviews and improvements. People who are willing to go on working in the farming sector must be helped to upgrade in all areas, whether it is business concepts, production and sales techniques, environmental preservation or food safety. The scale of ordinary-grade farming needs to be reduced, while the scale of high-grade farming should be expanded.
Besides providing assistance in the form of funding, technology, information and so on, staff assignment at government-run experimental and research institutes and agricultural research and extension stations needs to be adjusted, as do the duties assigned to the people who work there. Existing arrangements regarding the acquisition and allocation of intellectual property rights and technology transfer licensing fees need to be reviewed, in an all-out effort to help farmers achieve the goal of upgrading.
Unless these things are done immediately, future conflicts are inevitable. Let us all keep an eye on the government and urge it to stop wasting time and get moving.
Lee Wu-chung is a professor of agricultural economics and former director of the Yunlin County Government’s Department of Agriculture.
Translated by Julian Clegg
The EU’s biggest banks have spent years quietly creating a new way to pay that could finally allow customers to ditch their Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc cards — the latest sign that the region is looking to dislodge two of the most valuable financial firms on the planet. Wero, as the project is known, is now rolling out across much of western Europe. Backed by 16 major banks and payment processors including BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and Worldline SA, the platform would eventually allow a German customer to instantly settle up with, say, a hotel in France
On August 6, Ukraine crossed its northeastern border and invaded the Russian region of Kursk. After spending more than two years seeking to oust Russian forces from its own territory, Kiev turned the tables on Moscow. Vladimir Putin seemed thrown off guard. In a televised meeting about the incursion, Putin came across as patently not in control of events. The reasons for the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear. It could be an attempt to wear away at the morale of both Russia’s military and its populace, and to boost morale in Ukraine; to undermine popular and elite confidence in Putin’s rule; to
A traffic accident in Taichung — a city bus on Sept. 22 hit two Tunghai University students on a pedestrian crossing, killing one and injuring the other — has once again brought up the issue of Taiwan being a “living hell for pedestrians” and large vehicle safety to public attention. A deadly traffic accident in Taichung on Dec. 27, 2022, when a city bus hit a foreign national, his Taiwanese wife and their one-year-old son in a stroller on a pedestrian crossing, killing the wife and son, had shocked the public, leading to discussions and traffic law amendments. However, just after the
The international community was shocked when Israel was accused of launching an attack on Lebanon by rigging pagers to explode. Most media reports in Taiwan focused on whether the pagers were produced locally, arousing public concern. However, Taiwanese should also look at the matter from a security and national defense perspective. Lebanon has eschewed technology, partly because of concerns that countries would penetrate its telecommunications networks to steal confidential information or launch cyberattacks. It has largely abandoned smartphones and modern telecommunications systems, replacing them with older and relatively basic communications equipment. However, the incident shows that using older technology alone cannot
RSS