Qiaotou Science Park development: does it have the right to expropriate the organic zone? Council of Agriculture has not defined the scope of application of the Organic Agriculture Promotion Act, discussion postponed to a later date

For the Qiaotou Science Park development project, a second-stage environmental impact assessment scoping meeting was held today (5/12) at the Environmental Protection Administration. Because the development plan is scheduled to expropriate Zhongqi Organic Farm, Taiwan's first organic zone, the case concerns whether the long-term lease protection for tenant organic farmers under the Organic Agriculture Promotion Act can be implemented, making the case highly watched by the agricultural sector.

Before the official EPA meeting, legislators and representatives of environmental groups launched a surprise move, demanding clarification of procedural issues. They argued that until the Council of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Interior interpret the Organic Agriculture Promotion Act, the development scope of the Qiaotou Science Park plan cannot be determined, and insisted that the EPA should not hold the EIA scoping meeting. After an hour of heated debate between the two sides, half of the EIA committee members believed the meeting should be suspended, and the chair finally announced adjournment.

Zhongqi farmers: expropriating the organic zone for the science park breaks faith with farmers and the public

Before the EPA meeting began, farmers and supporting groups held a press conference outside the EPA. Yang Dengxu, acting chair of the Zhongqi Cooperative and founder of the Gunshui Ecological Circular Agriculture Promotion Association, said that if the organic zone is eliminated for the development of the science park, it will cause the Tsai administration's Organic Agriculture Promotion Act, passed in 2018, to lose the trust of farmers and all citizens. He called for preserving the organic farm so that agriculture and the science park can coexist and prosper together.

Farmer Lin Xiaoyou said that Taiwan has gone through the stage of exchanging environmental pollution for economic development, and it was only when people began to value ecology that organic agriculture rose. He hoped citizens would calmly consider that the economy is not a zero-sum game with the environment and agriculture.

Li Hanlin, director of the Citizen of the Earth Foundation, said that in recent years the idea of a "circular economy" has been advocated, and he hoped the Qiaotou Science Park would change its design to coexist with the nearby mud volcano ecological landscape and organic farm, giving rise to Taiwan's first ecological science park. Chen Wane, director of the Homemakers United Foundation, pointed out that under climate change, water sources and land will become even more precious, and organic agriculture has the function of restoring ecology. She looked forward to the government seeing the higher social development value.

Kaohsiung city councilor: the Qiaotou Science Park plan is merely a way to bail out the previously failed Qiaotou New Town development

Lin Yanting, a researcher at the Environmental Rights Protection Foundation, reminded the meeting that past strategic environmental assessments of science parks have repeatedly warned that science park development should not extensively develop agricultural land, and suggested the government re-examine the design.

New Power Party legislator Chen Jiaohua pointed out that the organic farm took ten years of operation to achieve its results, and the Executive Yuan should consider protecting farmland and food security. Taiwan People's Party legislator Zhang Qilu argued that including the Zhongqi organic zone in the Qiaotou Science Park's expropriation scope violates the Organic Agriculture Promotion Act, and the Council of Agriculture must act in accordance with protecting farmers' rights.

Kaohsiung city councilor Wu Yizheng, who made a special trip north to show support, sharply criticized the Qiaotou Science Park plan as bailing out the Qiaotou New Town that failed to develop more than twenty years ago, by developing the second phase of the new town into a science park to bring in population and solve the problem of large amounts of idle land in the first phase. Wu also believed that this case, by transforming the new town into a science park, evades many industrial zone development regulations and will ultimately increase the overall environmental burden on greater Kaohsiung.