A task force on stabilizing imported food prices and supplies of locally produced food will meet next week at the earliest, a Council of Agriculture official said yesterday.
Chen Wen-teh (陳文德), director-general of the Agriculture and Food Agency, said the task force would discuss “local production and distribution, the promotion of rice consumption and a revival of fallow paddy fields and sugar plantations.”
He said that at the request of Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), the task force would be formed by the council, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of the Interior.
He said the nation currently has a rice inventory of 470,000 tonnes, accounting for 36 percent of the country’s total consumption and far higher than the 17 percent to 18 percent recommended by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Taiwan’s self-sufficiency rate in rice is as high as 95 percent, although the nation relies heavily on imported grain for livestock feed, Chen added.
For this reason, if prices of corn and soybeans rise, it would trigger a spike in livestock prices that would also affect consumer prices, he said.
Chen’s deputy, Yu Sheng-feng (游勝鋒), said the goal of the task force is to stabilize both the volume and price of imported food.
Yu said the nation imports 5 million tonnes of corn for animal feed every year and 2 million tonnes of soybeans, and it is prone to the impact of higher import prices and fluctuations in the supplies of imported products.
He said the council would encourage the public to eat more locally grown rice and cut consumption of flour products, while continuing to encourage farmers to plant corn and soybeans on fallow land.
“Although this reactivated land might not produce much, it will make up for some of the shortfall and cut the proportion of imported grain,” Yu said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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