Today I read an article on UDN called “What’s Hung Hsiu-chu’s Path to Victory?”, and the author’s closing line “Tsai Ing-wen ‘seemingly’ proposed something, but it’s unclear and vague” really hit the mark for me.
The other day, Tsai Ing-wen went to Chiayi County Magistrate Judy Chang’s venue to deliver a speech on agricultural policy titled “Resolving the Food Safety Crisis: Tsai Ing-wen Vigorously Promotes Restoring Production Traceback Records to Ensure Food Production Transparency”. The speech script was extremely long, eloquent and emotionally engaging, spanning from ancient to modern times—you could tell the think tank writers had considerable skill. However, if you filter out the key points from the content, you’ll discover the entire segment really contains just the following few points:
1. Agricultural production techniques need further enhancement.
The Council of Agriculture has actually been continuously advancing agricultural techniques and even packaging and marketing them. Is Tsai Ing-wen planning to follow Monsanto’s example in genetic modification?
I believe Tsai Ing-wen isn’t that foolish as to damage her own electoral base. As for whether that will change after elections, who knows? And genetic modification is indeed a blank space in Taiwan’s agriculture and biotechnology—most currently comes from foreign imports.
Just the KMT opening genetic modification imports for animal feed is already drawing criticism, so the DPP probably wouldn’t be so blatant. Though given precedents like Lin Chia-lung, there are plenty of examples of people doing things they previously criticized.
2.Need to reduce dependence on international food sources, and boost marketing.
I’m not sure how Tsai Ing-wen arrived at this point, but does she think international grain is using high prices to compete with Taiwan’s local agricultural products? (Those who regularly visit Jason’s Market might think so.)
Many regional crops are originally only meant for local market supply—what would they be marketing internationally? And for international marketing, has she considered the capital investment needed, possible risks incurred, and farmers’ willingness?
Besides, if Taiwan agriculture promotes internationally, who would be the biggest buyer? Wouldn’t it just be Japan and mainland China? (Southeast Asian fruits beat ours in both quantity and taste anyway.) And if something goes wrong once, other countries will simply ban your imports entirely—it’s a risk not every farm family can bear.
By the way, during crop seasons you often hear news of unsold fruits or vegetables somewhere—it’s not really a problem of citizens or government. When you trace back the real cause, it’s simply that the crop is no longer demanded by the market. If farmers want to explore other marketing avenues, that’s certainly good, but it’s not the norm. Even if we made it the norm, whether farmers can consistently maintain production volume is also an issue.
3. Agricultural demographic decline needs to be addressed.
I suppose once Tsai Ing-wen issues a rallying call, there’ll be crowds of young people wanting to become farmers. Especially the netizens on PTT’s gossip board would probably be first in line.
4. The solution to food safety issues is production traceback records.
This policy should actually be excellent in theory, but I don’t see an effective implementation method (and we can’t invest excessive costs, otherwise it’ll open another black hole like our national health insurance). For example, how can many small-scale farmer-owners comply with this policy?
Although Judy Chang brushed aside the GGF mark, she independently introduced the “Japanese Good Agricultural Practice” (J-GAP for short) from Japan to certify production records for county farmers, even signing collaborative memorandums with Japanese officials. However, this service is primarily meant to pave the way for some farmers to market to Japan later. For instance, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture in 2005 allocated 2.74 billion yen to local governments to provide funding subsidies for “enterprises” promoting JGAP certification systems.
So should farmer-owners follow through on this policy? As far as I can see, clearly they can’t. The expenditure and cost recovery don’t match up.
Moreover, most food safety issues don’t stem from raw material producers but from malicious behavior by businesses in the supply chain. The most effective solution is still increasing criminal penalties and establishing traceability systems (like also seizing any illicit proceeds in relatives’ accounts), plus ensuring regular food inspections and corresponding penalties (like shutting down for a month on first inspection violation, strengthening with repeat violations).
5. Switch to economic crops.
This has always been Taiwan agriculture’s achilles heel. Whenever people see higher-value crops, they all rush to switch, which only results in lowering prices. Then everyone switches to other agricultural products again.
Conclusion
From these five points above, you can see that Tsai Ing-wen’s speech at Judy Chang’s venue was basically all nonsense. Then you’re telling me Tsai Ing-wen’s policies have more international perspective?
Not to mention that many of these points actually contradict each other, but Taiwan already has a group of people quietly doing these things. Why do politicians always need to negate grassroots workers’ efforts just to showcase their own value?
Finally, I have to mention something quite amusing. During the meeting, Tsai Ing-wen mentioned wanting to return farmland to its actual agricultural use, preventing speculators from manipulating farmland prices, and so on. Yet standing right beside her was Su Jia-chuan.
Su Jia-chuan is the official representative of farmland being put to private use. It’s a joke only someone special can make—Tsai Ing-wen actually has quite a knack for comedy (laughs).