Expanding Scale of Agricultural Operation to Encourage Youths Stay in Agriculture

Taiwan 's agricultural development has been centered on family farms by taking agriculture, farmers and rural villages into consideration. Although expanding scale of operation may not immediately get results by resorting to compulsory public power, but a sound practice is to combine small farmers to form production and marketing groups and other farmers organizations and promote such methods of expanding scale of operation and assisting enterprise management as “Small Landlords and Big Tenants” by taking into consideration the interests of small family farms. These measures will increase Taiwan rural villages’ degree of receptivity and high flexibility in response to economic development, especially enhancing the society's stability in a critical period of economic development.

Taiwan has established various special agricultural zones, including organic zones (534 hectares), flower and vegetable zones (486 hectares), rice production and marketing zones (14,000 hectares) and agricultural technology parks. They all have the function of developing local industries. And through the promotion of “Small Landlords and Big Tenants” policy, the average acreage of farms running by farmer families has increased 6 times and the average age of big tenants is about 41 years, showing the initial accomplishment of the project.

The Council of Agriculture (COA) will integrate related project-supporting measures in the future to establish the overall system of value chains for special agricultural zones, safeguard the quality environment of agricultural production, bring into play the advantages of local industry, adjust the structure of production and marketing, and increase the efficiency and benefits of agricultural businesses. The government will also establish self-management and safeguard mechanisms for quality agricultural production environment to promote the development of safe agriculture; encourage farm youths to become big tenants so as to introduce new ideas to rural villages and invigorate the utilization of farmland and develop the rural economy; as well as set up the framework of sharing resources with groups as its core of operation to multiply the effect of policy measures in enhancing production and marketing efficiency. The key tasks include:

1.Establishing safe agricultural production bases

　a) Promoting the planting of appropriate farm crops to establish safe production mode for the core industry.

　b) Assisting the centralized utilization of farmland and expanding the scale of agricultural operation to form a stable core industry supply chain.

2.Establishing the system of training professional young farmers

　a)Providing young farmers with systematic education of knowledge according to industrial management and technical characteristics suitable for local conditions to develop their ability of large-scale operation management.

　b)Establishing a platform for management knowledge sharing and experience exchanging by sponsoring seminars on different subjects and publishing example cases.

3.Assisting farmers groups in developing integrated innovative management mode

　a)Assisting farmers groups in combining local young farmers and production and marketing resources to develop diversified value-added utilization mode.

　b)Strengthening farmers groups' industrial value chain management capability to promote agricultural transformation and upgrading.

Mainland China Develops Agriculture with Economy as Top Consideration

Cross-strait exchange activities have increasedsignificantly in recent years and some who visited farmer enterprise parks inmainland China believed that Taiwan can learn from China and establish special agricultural zones to facilitate the development of local agriculture.

In fact, the average acreage of mainland Chinese farmland during the early years was smaller than that of Taiwan farmers.China has actively expanded the scale of agriculture in recent years but only focused on problems of “agriculture industry development” while neglecting farmers and rural villages. Since mainland Chinese farmland belongs to villages and individual farmers do not own farmland, the Chinese government can expropriate farmland to expand the scale of agricultural operation when more and more farmers migrated to cities with high degree of economic development. But when the demand for labors in the city reduced after the economy has grown to a certain extent, farmer-turned city workers who lost farmland may easily become a serious social problem.

In comparison, Taiwan has attached importance to agriculture, farmers and rural villages. And it is not possible and unfeasible for the government to expropriate farmland for agricultural scale expansion because Taiwan is a democratic society and farmland is owned by private citizens. Therefore, the government has adopted the practice of “small farmers taking root,” applying such new business models as assisting agricultural production and marketing groups and “Small Landlord and Big Tenants” to gradually expand the scale of agricultural operation. Just like Japan and some other countries, Taiwan 's agriculture is a system of family farms. Since 80% of Taiwan farmers’ family income does not come from agriculture and the urban-rural gap is relatively small, rural villages have high degree of receptivity and flexibility in response to economic development, which has the function of increasing the society's stability.

Agricultural Policy Requires Full Cooperation between Central and Local Governments

While implementing the agricultural policy, many problems can only be solved by joint efforts of the central and local governments. For instance, liucheng (one kind of oranges) production in Yunlin County is the largest in Taiwan and the County government must propose measures to deal with the problem for its overproduction, whereas the central government provides assistance. And, Yunlin County has to plan for the overall development of its agriculture and the central government has assisted the County Government for it to become the Agricultural Capital of Taiwan, which the County planned to be.

And in recent years the government has promoted the establishment of agricultural biotechnology parks, including the Ping-Tung Agricultural Biotechnology Park and the Tainan Orchid Plantation Park in which many companies have started their businesses. But the Chiayi Herb Biotechnology Park is not yet in operation because the targeted manufacturers could not implement the contracts they signed with the Chiayi County Government. This case demonstrates that agricultural construction requires local governments to cooperate with the central government. For example, the central government will promote such enterprise management assistance as

agricultural production and marketing groups, train agricultural extension personnel to serve as assistant advisors, and form the local circle of assistance responsibility with district agricultural research and extension station, county or city government and the advisor and expert team for agricultural development to be effectively implemented, increasing management efficiency and competitiveness for the benefit of farmers.