The agricultural Community has always made up an important part of the pan-green camp’s support base. Now they have become the target of a major effort by Chinese officials to win their support.
Rumors have circulated in agricultural villages that if there is a change in national government next year, it would affect the sale of agricultural products to China. This has drawn a lot of attention from farmers. Whether this would affect the willingness of farmers to vote is worthy of further observation.
Cross-strait exchanges have been intense over the past few years, and thanks to government-planned promotion, the total value of Taiwanese agricultural exports to China has grown. Last year, the total value of agricultural exports to China was almost US$1 billion. China has now surpassed Japan as the biggest buyer of Taiwanese agricultural products, thus making Taiwanese farmers even more dependent on the Chinese market.
Although academics and other experts have advised the government not to place all its eggs in one basket, telling it to spread the risk by developing other overseas markets, advantages offered by the Chinese government — such as increased purchases, simplified customs inspection procedures, slashed customs tariffs and expanded distribution channels, together with the Taiwanese government’s wish to improve policy performance and convenience and to avoid complex customs procedures — has meant that Taiwan continues to focus its agricultural exports on China.
While this helps relieve the domestic agricultural product surplus and improve Taiwan’s export sales, most of the profit goes to conglomerates, corporations and groups. Small-scale farmers stand to gain little and instead it results in the delay of urgently needed reforms such as comprehensive farmland planning, management and use; adjustments to the human resources framework; distribution and marketing system reform; a comprehensive upgrading of production technology and the introduction of a program for farmers who want to leave the farming industry.
This delay in reform has resulted in uneven product quality — we often read about pesticide residue in agricultural raw materials or products on the market. Not all domestic agricultural products are of sufficient quality allowing them to meet strict international standards in terms of food safety, quarantine, product specifications and so on.
This poses a major obstacle to the development of new overseas markets and makes it difficult to meet the competition resulting from the large volumes of low-cost international products on the market resulting from trade liberalization.
The result of next year’s presidential election will indicate the future direction of cross-strait relations, and agriculture has always been an important part of China’s Taiwan policy. Considering China’s massive consumption, power and the livelihoods of Taiwanese farmers, the next government should direct its efforts toward maintaining positive cross-strait interactions.
Politics, economics and farmers will be the first to feel the impact of any changes to the relationship. Although China is unlikely to instantly change the cross-strait flow of agricultural products, it might adopt a series of lesser measures such as demanding that Taiwan respect the WTO’s most-favored-nation principle and allow the import of the 830 Chinese agricultural products that are currently not allowed.
Beijing could also tighten inspection of products imported from Taiwan, review benefits extended to Taiwanese agricultural products and start to compete with Taiwanese agricultural and fishery products for international market share. It could also speed up the gathering of Taiwanese breeding technologies in order to weaken Taiwan’s agricultural advantage and tacitly allow the smuggling of agricultural products into Taiwan to affect market prices.
Such measures would have an unpredictable psychological impact on Taiwanese farmers and they would also have an impact on agricultural product marketing, pricing and farmer incomes. The next government must take careful preventative action and not resort to wishful thinking. It must not respond to farmers’ concerns by simply saying that the government would manage marketing efforts and develop new markets and that this would improve profits.
The reason for these concerns is that during the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) time in government, it made a strong push for the international marketing of agricultural products. It stressed the complete integration of small farmers into operations based on the idea that “big is strong” in order to develop export-oriented agriculture, establish a specialized marketing system and direct the establishment of large agricultural product warehouses and logistics centers.
It also wanted to increase marketing and delivery efficiency and organize export credit insurance, while pointing out that the international marketing of Taiwanese agricultural products lacked a stable product supply framework geared toward exports and that this situation had to be improved.
How many of these plans remained in place after eight years?
This has been followed by almost eight years of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule, during which time the KMT has implemented a similar plan to increase agricultural exports by expanding international cooperation and implemented a plan to improve the introduction of Taiwanese products to the global market. The effect of these plans has been limited and agricultural export value stands at a mere US$1.84 billion.
In addition, it has been concentrated on a small number of products, and nothing has come from discussions about establishing a dedicated agency to market agricultural products internationally.
Agriculture is suffering from a series of problems, such as low income among farmers, an aging agricultural workforce, a severe shortage of labor, routine imbalances in the product marketing and distribution system, highly exploitative intermediaries, slow adjustments to industry structures, an inability to unify quality, the pervasiveness of “fake” farmers and the loss of good farmland.
Not one of these problems has been effectively addressed.
Freeing Taiwan from excessive dependence on the Chinese market and developing other international markets requires time and careful planning, as well as the ability to execute good plans instead of just spewing hot air.
The DPP’s candidate has a very good chance of winning the election next year and the party needs to put its best minds together to come up with more concrete measures to reassure farmers.
Du Yu is chief executive officer of the Chen-Li Task Force for Agricultural Reform.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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