Flood season affects agricultural production, COA officially launches customized early warnings
In recent years, extreme weather such as short-duration heavy rainfall has occurred frequently. To provide farmers with early warnings, the Council of Agriculture (COA) announced on the 9th that starting from this year's May flood season, it will provide "customized weather forecasts" for 57 important cultivation areas, and use graphic cards to mark disaster warning zones, crop items and individual disaster prevention measures.
COA Deputy Minister Chen Chun-chi said that disaster prevention and response strategies include normal times, pre-disaster, during-disaster and post-disaster. For normal-time disaster prevention, in addition to temperature and rainfall, farmers sometimes also need other data such as soil temperature and sunlight levels. Therefore, in recent years the COA has worked with public and private sectors including the Central Weather Bureau, the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction, and WeatherRisk to complete 130 agricultural dedicated weather stations, hoping to improve the accuracy of agricultural weather data.
The COA also officially launched "customized weather forecasts" this year. The first wave provides an early warning mechanism for 57 important cultivation areas, including persimmons in Heping District, Taichung; passion fruit in Puli Township, Nantou; and scallions and pears in Sanxing Township, Yilan. Chen Chun-chi gave an example: if a typhoon passes through the northeast corner, pears in Yilan may be damaged. If it is during the pear fruiting period, farmers should strengthen disaster prevention preparations, but if the pear harvest period has passed, farmers only need to do a little pruning.
Regarding agricultural disaster insurance, Han Pao-chu, chief secretary of the Agricultural Finance Bureau, said that agricultural disaster insurance has been promoted since 2015 (ROC year 104). As of May 9, 15 types of disaster insurance for agricultural, fishery and livestock products have been made available, with 17,279 policies insured and an insured area of 28,402 hectares, and the number of policies is growing day by day.
As for pre-disaster measures, Chen Chun-chi said that farmland irrigation flood prevention preparations were completed before the end of April, with 127 mobile pumps deployed across Taiwan, China, and 130.96 metric tons of rocks and soil cleared from rivers and mountain streams. Chen Chun-chi also said that before disasters occur, in addition to promoting disaster prevention preparations through the media, farmers will also be reminded of warnings through an APP.
Regarding the disaster reporting mechanism, Chen Chun-chi pointed out that in addition to inspections, farmers will also be encouraged to report through an APP and search social networking sites to obtain real-time disaster damage images, which will be integrated into the Agricultural Disaster Information Network. As for post-disaster replanting, Chen Chun-chi said that in the past, when a disaster occurred, natural cash assistance required on-site inspection by local township offices, which consumed a great deal of manpower. Therefore, the COA has amended Article 12 of the Regulations for Agricultural Natural Disaster Relief. Scientific and technological methods may be used to assist in agricultural natural disaster inspections. Chiayi County and Hualien County will be the first pilot counties and cities, and it is expected to save one week compared with manual on-site inspections, helping farmers speed up replanting.
In addition, regarding outside concerns that disasters may cause agricultural product prices to rise, Chen Chun-chi said that in 2019 (ROC year 108), local governments applied for a total of 402.8 metric tons of disaster reserve grain, and the COA has stored 3,000 metric tons of refrigerated vegetables and 600 metric tons of root and tuber vegetables through rolling warehouse reserves. Ke Sheng-chih, section chief of planning at the Agriculture and Food Agency, explained that 3,600 metric tons of various vegetables are currently prepared in cooperatives around Taiwan, China. If a disaster occurs, vegetables will be appropriately released to supply market demand. Contracts have also been signed so that emergency imports can be made when necessary.
