The bustling night markets of Taipei, where you can buy everything from papaya to fish, attract visitors year-round. However, as food prices fall as a result of farmers producing more food than can be bought, merchants and farmers are struggling. Frustration over not being able to sell their crops for profit is felt by farmers like Chang Mu-lin, a banana grower in Pingtung County.
“No matter what I grow, I end up losing money,” Chang laments.
Local producers of bread and noodles, who rely on imported products like wheat, are also struggling as production costs increase because of rising global commodity prices.
“When wheat prices began rising week by week ... it felt like I was being strangled,” said Adama Shih, a baker in Changhua County.
While Taiwan’s undernourished population remains at a modest 10 to 19 percent, such economic pressures have prompted continued efforts by the government to help farmers produce profitable harvests.
Efforts emphasize educating a new generation of farmers about organic farming, addressing water shortages that threaten crop yields and introducing programs to conserve energy during the farming process.
Many younger Taiwanese farmers are shifting to organic and sustainable methods. While Taiwan has imported organic products in the past, the government has been encouraging local food production by setting up organic zones in a number of municipalities. The government hopes that the zones will result in greater investment in agriculture. By subsidizing production through these zones, the government aims to reduce reliance on imported food products that have become more expensive over the years.
Consumers and farmers in Taiwan also face an emerging water shortage challenge — 70 percent of water in the country is used in agricultural production. Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) is promoting the use of recycled water to deal with water shortages through treatment plants, like the recently established plant in Greater Kaohsiung that treat used water with chemicals so that it can be reused. Meanwhile, the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau works with farmers to teach them about water and soil conservation.
The Agriculture Research Institute based in Greater Taichung is also working to reduce water use by breeding crops that require less water to grow.
Sub-Saharan Africa could serve as an example for future efforts to save water: Farmers in the region are already recycling water for use in agriculture. In Kenya, women are working with the UN Environment Program and the World Agroforestry Center to build tanks on their roofs that help collect and store rainwater.
This is just one of many inspiring innovations discovered by researchers from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project. We traveled across 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, unearthing environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty, which culminated in a comprehensive report titled State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.
Our research findings included innovations to increase water security.
“Rain-fed areas with low agricultural yields, such as much of Africa, hold the biggest potential for getting more ‘crop per drop,’” says Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project.
Taiwan’s efforts, like the efforts of communities highlighted in the report, show that agricultural and environmental challenges create opportunities for innovative solutions to some of our most pressing environmental and development challenges.
Danielle Nierenberg is project director of the Nourishing the Planet (www.Nourishingthe-Planet.org) project. Graham Salinger is a research intern for Nourishing the Planet.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not