The Taiwan Agricultural Academia-Industry Alliance (Taiwan 3A, 台灣農業產學聯盟) is getting ready to help solve China's agricultural problems through a joint program organized by several Taiwanese agricultural experts and a financial institution in Macau.
Wu Ming-ming (
The idea of getting Taiwanese experts to help China deal with its agricultural problems was proposed by the Macau branch of Delta Asia Financial Group, which took the initiative to get in touch with the council, Wu said.
"Council officials told us that the Macau financial institution would like to invest HK$500 million [US$64.2 million] in an agricultural development fund to help poor areas in China, and that it wanted us to provide the agricultural expertise and personnel," Wu said.
"We accepted the council's suggestion to participate as we considered it a meaningful job," he said.
" Not only will it relieve poverty in China, we also hope it can create a win-win situation in terms of cross-strait cooperation," he said.
The program was initially drawn up by Taiwan 3A and Stanley Au (
They chose Beihai in Guangxi Province, Meixian in Guangdong and Kunming in Yunnan for the pilot projects, Wu said.
While the exact details of the program will not be ironed out until Au's next visit to Taiwan in September, Wu said it will focus on three areas.
China has long been plagued by three agriculture-related problems -- agriculture, farmers and rural villages," he said.
"Based on Taiwan's agricultural development experience, I thought that Taiwan's agricultural experts could find some way to solve these problems," he said.
The first goal of the program will be to improve the low productivity of China's villages, enabling farmers to produce enough food to sustain their families, he said.
The second goal is to ensure food safety by teaching farmers about the proper use of pesticides and other chemicals that they use, he said.
The third goal will be to teach farmers to protect their environment and ecological resources, Wu said.
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