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Zones will hit small-scale farmers
By Du Yu 杜宇
Governments exist to ensure the greatest possible benefit for the public. It is of paramount importance that Taiwan’s farmers are taken care of, because agriculture in Taiwan primarily consists of small-scale farmers. Taking care of farmers does not simply mean throwing money at them. It is imperative that the operational efficiency and competitiveness of agriculture are continually improved. Has the government done that?
It well known that the average annual income of farmers — the ones at the front line of the agricultural sector’s supply chain — is less than NT$200,000 a year, which is significantly less than those working in seedling research and development or branding and marketing, which are tasks that come before and after the actual farming respectively. The added value created within the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy also far exceeds that of the primary sector.
Bear in mind, however, that “superior agricultural raw materials” are the core factor for added value in agriculture and give farming in Taiwan its main competitive advantage.
In Japan, like Taiwan, most farmers operate on a small scale. To help deal with the impact of trade liberalization and make its agriculture more competitive, the Japanese government has pushed for an innovative agricultural policy called “sixth-order industrialization,” which is aimed at increasing annual added value within the farming sector. This method combines the financial resources of farming groups, corporations and banks to help boost manufacturing and marketing in the farming sector, sharing profits with farmers and bringing them greater benefits.
By contrast, part of Taiwan’s “new value-added chain farming” policy entails the use of value-added agriculture within the government’s proposed free economic pilot zones, attracting overseas businesses and importing raw agricultural materials from other countries for processing and marketing. This would effectively hand over the lion’s share of profits to corporations and manufacturers instead of farmers.
Turning raw materials from other countries into locally marketed products such as pineapple cakes may pose no threat to a major Taiwanese pineapple cake brand like SunnyHills, but it would definitely have an adverse effect on most of the nation’s other pineapple cake brands and provoke a strong reaction among farmers.
Bringing in big agribusiness to help upgrade agriculture can be a good thing, but the point of government is to ensure that these companies do not simply exploit local farmland to rake in profit for themselves. That would only serve to solidify the government’s reputation for helping big business while hurting farmers.
On the one hand, the government emphasizes that Taiwan’s superior production and manufacturing technologies can attract foreign investment within the proposed pilot zones, which they claim will create jobs. On the other hand, in the name of globalization, they are throwing open the doors that will cause Taiwan to lose key farming technology and equipment, such as breeding expertise, production management, processing and storage.
Those who will benefit will be the big corporations, not ordinary farmers. Once these corporations have acquired this knowledge, they will use their vast financial resources to engage in mass production outside of Taiwan, marketing their products as Taiwanese varieties to avoid charges of forgery. They will use all their advantages, including low costs and long-term stable supply, to seize foreign markets and might even find ways to sell the products back to Taiwan. This would subject small-scale farmers to intense foreign competition.
The policy is obviously contradictory. In such circumstances, why would foreign companies go to all the trouble of crossing the sea to invest in farming operations in Taiwan? How would such a setup help create jobs and boost farming revenue in this country?
Many Taiwanese techniques have already leaked abroad, such as those used in eel and monosex tilapia farming, fish fillet processing, orchid cultivation and the Black Pearl variety of wax apples. Given this, it is easy to see how Taiwan’s unique agricultural produce could come to be grown and sold abroad.
Added value in farming is mostly generated by the processing of agricultural produce. Including aquarium fish and related industries in this category hardly fits the bill. As well as contravening the original purpose of establishing the free economic pilot zones, it would bring with it many risks, including the importation of pathogens and possible devastation of indigenous species and ecosystems.
Production and export of genetically modified aquarium fish could have an impact on the export of other kinds of fish, as well as violating global biological conservation agreements. Taiwan is no stranger to such incidents, having been hit by invasive species such as Amazon arapaima and piranhas, red swamp crawfish from the US, giant mudfish, anglerfish and GloFish — genetically modified fluorescent zebrafish — yet all these incidents have been intentionally ignored without any opportunity for open debate.
The issue of added value in agricultural production within the planned free economic pilot zones is riddled with problems. People are hearing mixed messages, but the public has the right to know. Since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is so confident about his ability to convince the public, why not have academics hold an open debate on the issue right away to allow the truth to shine through, instead of dodging the issues and wasting government resources?
Du Yu is chief executive officer of the Chen-Li Task Force for Agricultural Reform.
Translated by Kyle Jeffcoat
source: Taipei Times
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