Orange ladybugs and long-legged spiders become environmental indicators, as the scope of green conservation farming expands

The Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation began cooperating with the Forestry Bureau 5 years ago to promote the "Green Conservation Label," using environmentally friendly farming methods to restore the habitats of protected species such as the pheasant-tailed jacana and the emerald tree frog. Starting this month, Tse-Xin has additionally incorporated "indicator species," "commemorative species" and "habitat environment creation," so that farmers whose fields have no protected species can also join the Green Conservation Label. It has now partnered with the Hualien District Agricultural Research and Extension Station to include the environmentally sensitive long-legged spider and the orange ladybird beetle as indicators, and invites the public to buy friendly crops and protect biodiversity with their mouths.

Those without protected species can also join the Green Conservation Label

The 7 farmers newly joining the Green Conservation Label this time are all contract members of the Hualien Yin-Chuan organic rice group, but Chen Jung-tsung explained that although organic, like the Green Conservation Label, prohibits the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, being organic does not necessarily qualify one to join Green Conservation. "For example, the field ridges in organic fields may be concrete. Green Conservation focuses on overall biodiversity, so it may ask farmers to plant some grass on the ridges to let living things inhabit them." This time, Yin-Chuan farmers even dug ecological ponds specially to increase biodiversity.

A total of 145 households across Taiwan have joined the Green Conservation Label, protecting nearly 200 hectares of land. Currently only Hualien has proposed the concept of "indicator organisms," Fan Mei-ling said. For now the research focuses initially on rice paddies, because most people in Yilan and Hualien make a living growing rice; no pesticides or chemical fertilizers is only the basic requirement, and in the future they will further establish farming methods suited to the indicator organisms and promote them to more eastern farmers.

In addition to using organisms as goalkeepers, Tse-Xin has also incorporated habitat creation indicators, encouraging farmers to certify through the "environment," for example by digging ecological ponds, streams and shallow ditches, or creating grassy field ridges, shrub hedgerows, bamboo groves, or fallow land and miscellaneous land undergoing natural succession; after review by experts, these can also join the Green Conservation Label.