Agriculture had been the main drive for Taiwan ’s economic development. The agricultural administration in the past has made noticeable progress in production technology and unit productivity in agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal breeding under the “using agriculture to nurse industry; using industry to develop agriculture” policy to upgrade production techniques, reform the regulations, strengthen pest prevention and to expand the market for agricultural products.

        To promote agricultural development and upgrade farmers’ earnings, a series of “Important Measures to Accelerate Agricultural Development” have been implemented since 1973. These include the “Project for Upgrade of Farmers’ Incomes and Rural Development” from 1979 to 1983, the “Project for Improvement of Agricultural Structure and Upgrade of Farmers’ Incomes” from 1986 to 1991 and the “Integrated Agricultural Adjustment Project” from 1992 to 1997. In line with the Integrated National Land Development Plan during the same time period, the “Agricultural Land Release Project” was implemented in 1997 to promote reasonable distribution and effective use of agricultural land resources. Meanwhile, to help farmers to cope with Taiwan ’s joining to the WTO, the council in July in the same year also initiated the “Reform on Wet and Dry Rice Field Usage” as well as revised and announced the “Relief Measures for Agricultural Products Threatened by Imported Products”. In addition, the “Provisional Statute for Welfare Allowance for Senior Farmers” was announced and implemented in 1995 and amended in 1998 to cover senior fishermen. Modifications were again made in 2003 to raise the allowance and establish the system to adjust it every five years. The “Cross-century Agricultural Construction Project” begun in 1998, the “New Meet-the-21 ^st -century Agricultural Plan” has been executed since 2001, the “Project for Improvement of International Agricultural Marketing” was regulated in 2003, the price-stabilizing measures for agricultural products started in 2004, and draft on “Regulation on Production and Assessment of Agriculture Products” was completed in 2005, all aimed at developing agriculture and rural areas and looking after farmers on a full scale. The recent project is “New Agriculture Movement”, started in 2006, aiming at constructing resumes for agriculture products, creating better environment for wander vÖgels, setting up global marketing strategy for agriculture products from Taiwan and researching on possible renewable energy at fallow paddy fields. All these measures are meant to bring Taiwan ’s agriculture to a new level and to build up the creative, vigorous and charming image of Taiwan ’s farms.

        This yearbook has three sections: text expositions, statistic charts and appendix.

        The text expositions are summarized analyses of the overall production of agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal breeding, prices of agricultural products, census of rural households and population employed and farming incomes, etc. There are in total 126 statistic charts covering 17 categories, namely agricultural economy indexes, agricultural productions and prices of products and materials, rice purchases by the government, land, farming households and agricultural labor, agricultural production materials, agricultural damages from natural disasters, agro-economy, management incomes, welfare of farmers, animal and plant disease control and quarantine, farming water resources, water and soil conservation, natural conservation, farmer groups and related staff workers.

        The material in this book has been collected and arranged by this council and its subordinate agencies and laid out, compiled, printed and published by the Statistics Office of this council. As this is a national and general agricultural statistics publication, the information herein has a rather expansive coverage and omissions are therefore inevitable. Any assistance to help improve this publication will be much appreciated.

Minister of Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

Su , Jia-chyuan
June 2007