Foreword

As Taiwan is an agriculture-based country, agricultural administrations in the past has always made noticeable progress in both production technology and unit productivity in agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal husbandry by following the policy of “using agriculture to nurse industry and using industry to develop agriculture” to upgrade production skills, renovate the agricultural system, develop water resources, increase fertilizer supplies, improve disease control and 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. Simultaneously, in order to minimize the impact on farmers from Taiwan’s acceptance into WTO, the council in July the same year initiated the “Wet and Dry Rice Field Use Adjustment Project” as well as revised and announced the “Relief Measures for Agricultural Products Endangered by Imports”. 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” actively executed since 2001, the “Project for Improvement of International Agricultural Marketing” engendered in 2003 and the price-stabilizing measures for agricultural products started in 2004 were all aimed at developing agriculture and rural areas and looking after farmers on a full scale.

　　 To present the complete agricultural statistic data and avoid any discrepancies, the council performed a full-scale review of the size, format and contents of the 2004 annual report, downsized and integrated it as follows: The council has partially deleted certain published periodicals and web pages; only specific important categories and items that manifest overall administrative performance are listed, while two extra charts have been added to include statistics of scholarships for children of farmers and fishermen and significant agricultural damages from natural disasters.

　　 This book is divided into three parts – text expositions, statistic charts and appendages. The text expositions are summarized analyses of the overall production of agriculture, forestry, fishery and animal husbandry, 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 unavoidable. Any assistance to help improve this publication will be much appreciated.

Minister of Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan

Lee Ching-lung
June 2003