Since 2000, when the Agricultural Development Act (農業發展條例) was amended, any natural person has been able to buy or sell farmland and build structures on it. Since then, the situation with agricultural land has descended into chaos of an unprecedented level.
The nation has rapidly lost land formerly used for agriculture: From 2000 to 2013, a total of 51,644 hectares of land, of which 88 percent were paddy fields, have no longer been used to plant crops.
These crops were replaced with developments, with 1,633 new buildings constructed on the land from 2007 to 2013. These buildings were constructed on 4,085 hectares of land, with the highest number of new buildings erected in Yilan County, where 7,551 houses have gone up from 2000 to March this year.
The vast majority of people erecting these buildings are referred to as “fake farmers”; only 38.8 percent of the people building on the land from 2008 to 2013 were actual farmers.
There have also been serious violations of the regulations governing construction on farmland, with as many as 76 percent of those buildings failing to adhere to regulations. There is also land being held back for speculative purposes, and when it is sold it will not be used for farming.
To address this mess, the Control Yuan interceded on two occasions in 2010, resulting in the Ministry of the Interior and the Council of Agriculture making amendments to the Regulations Governing Agricultural Dwelling Houses (農業用地興建農舍辦法) that were implemented on July 1, 2013.
However, this did nothing to improve the situation — it only got worse. Indeed, if the situation is not corrected soon, the nation’s food self-sufficiency ratio and ecosystem services will be put at risk.
Finding themselves under fire, the ministry and council announced that they would make further amendments to the legislation.
The principal change is that for an individual to be considered a “true” farmer, they must have farmer status and farm insurance, as well as health insurance. This status would be subject to rigorous checks, and ownership of farm dwellings can only be transferred to individuals engaged in actual farming.
Taiwan has a large population densely packed into cities, towns, urban areas, rural districts and local communities.
The idea that farmers need to build dwellings on their farmland is a non-issue, and the deregulation of the construction of residences on farmland in 2000 was the result of political arm-twisting by a faction in the legislature representing the interests of landowners, pure and simple.
If the nation is to address the chaos regarding the construction of residential buildings on farmland, it will have to do away with past ways of thinking and historical baggage, and consider — from the perspective of maintaining food production, food production potential and ecosystem services — whether there is a need to construct residential buildings on land for agricultural use.
The legislature needs to remove Article 18 of the Agricultural Development Act, abolish the Regulations Governing Agricultural Dwelling Houses and completely prohibit the building of dwellings on agricultural land.
The nation also needs to have an integrated plan for urban and rural development and a rural and regional regeneration plan to create a new approach to farming, promote diverse development in rural areas and bring new life to rural economies to meet the needs of farmers and those who aspire to live the agricultural life.
Yang Chung-hsin is a retired Academia Sinica researcher.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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