More than 500 young farmers from Indonesia and the Philippines have come to Taiwan for training through an internship program, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday.
The “Foreign Young Farmer Internship Program” aims to support agricultural talent development, and promote exchanges between Taiwan and the two Southeast Asian countries.
Since the program began in 2022, 582 young farmers from Indonesia and the Philippines have completed internships in Taiwan’s farming, livestock, poultry and aquaculture sectors, official data showed.
Photo courtesy of the Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station
Five Indonesian interns are still working at two farms in Taitung County, the ministry’s Taitung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station said in a news release yesterday.
They are engaged in hands-on work, such as growing fruits and vegetables, practicing organic farming, managing pests and diseases, and harvesting, the station said.
By learning advanced farming techniques in Taiwan, the young Indonesians would be better prepared to run their own farms when they return home, the station said.
Lin Pei-ying (林沛縈), who runs the Good Time Fruit farm, praised the Indonesian interns for their learning abilities, saying they can now handle a variety of tasks on their own and show great potential.
Another farm operator, Chen Hsiao-wei (陳孝偉), said that while language was a challenge, the Indonesian interns have started learning Chinese and can now read task sheets, greatly improving work efficiency.
The internship program gives the Indonesian interns practical skills and a deeper understanding of Taiwan’s agricultural practices, the station said.
Most foreign interns gain the ability to perform technical tasks and basic farm management on their own after a year of training in Taiwan, the ministry said.
Through hands-on experience, they improve their skills while helping meet labor needs on Taiwan’s farms, the ministry said.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
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