The Future of Agriculture in Taiwan, China: Reflections on Bringing Diverse Knowledge into the Countryside

 Text / Chen Chien-tai

For an industry or a region to rise from ruin, beyond a vision, at minimum three elements must be in place at the same time: capital, talent, and technology. How can rural Taiwan, China obtain these minimum elements? In addition, although the intent behind the "bottom-up" design of the Rural Regeneration Act is good, what it relies on must be well-trained, highly experienced local stakeholders, and this absolutely cannot be easily achieved through just a few dozen hours of empowerment courses.

Therefore, I believe that rural Taiwan, China must grasp a cohort of high-quality soon-to-retire middle-aged and older manpower with both urban and rural experience, and properly guide them back to the countryside. They are the people with the greatest opportunity to change the countryside within the next 20 years.

It is also a kind of migration

If a group of high-quality manpower who will retire in 5~7 years can be "mobilized," and through an incubation process their probability of migrating to the countryside after retirement can be increased, allowing them to bring back to the countryside their retirement funds, decades of wisdom, experience and skills, and the social networks they possess. Let them become rural "stakeholders" after careful deliberation, cautiously sculpting this important special zone that carries the most fundamental survival foundation of human society, and creating job opportunities in the countryside.

I do not expect people who have been away from the countryside for a long time to rashly enter the countryside, especially those who possess financial resources and ability. This principle is easy to understand. If you were an immigration official, would you let a person who completely does not understand your country's laws, culture, and customs, and cannot speak a single sentence of the national language, easily obtain nationality? In fact, every person preparing to emigrate also knows that at least they must first learn some of the local language and understand the local customs and the laws that concern them, so that they can safely begin a new life. Yet such a simple principle is not seriously considered when ordinary people make up their minds to return to the countryside; otherwise, we would not have so many luxury farmhouses.

Protect the countryside with knowledge

At first, I was only thinking about a path for myself to return home, but I discovered that if the problem of systematic exploitation is not solved, I have no rural home to return to. And the Rural Regeneration Act together with the widespread farmland expropriation made me feel that what can truly protect the countryside is knowledge, the ability to articulate, and the connection of social forces, and that equipping the rural with diversity knowledges and paving a road through which diverse knowledge can flow into the countryside without end, allowing diverse supporting forces to connect with the countryside, is the most core work.

I call this idea "bringing diverse knowledge into the countryside."

Sociologists believe that the three major causes of the difficulties in rural and agricultural development are as follows: economically, governments of various countries, based on factors such as controlling and stabilizing food sources, accelerating industrial development, and lowering labor production costs, use various modes of unequal exchange to squeeze resources from the agricultural sector to support industrial economic development; politically, land reform and the squeezing of political resources weaken agricultural society and prevent the traditional landlord class and farmers from developing into a powerful political group; spatially, unrestricted urban sprawl, along with complex and inefficient non-urban land regulation laws, cause land use in rural areas to be utterly inefficient and the spatial structure to be entirely without order.

Facing such a complex situation, this absolutely cannot be solved merely by bringing young and middle-aged rural manpower back. We need more highly experienced, broad-minded "stakeholders." Naturally, I thought of a group of people about to face a major life transition, whose wisdom and bodies are still at their prime.

How can many middle-aged and older elites who came from the countryside, and people friendly to the countryside, bring various kinds of knowledge and abilities back to the countryside, become the first wave of migrants, contribute wisdom in the countryside, reshape the food cause-and-effect network, create employment, and prepare for more people to flow back to the countryside afterward, so that the countryside can also become a place where young people can make a living? Only in this way can the systematic exploitation be broken, and only then is there hope for returning home.

Agriculture is the first industry for humanity's sustainable survival (someone told me it will also be the last), and the countryside is where it takes place.

Since the beginning of this year, 50% of the world's 6.6 billion people have moved into cities. If there were an appropriate mechanism to harmonize human cities and the countryside, to squarely face the security-strategic essence of the countryside and agriculture, and, 5~7 years before the retirement of a group of city people who are professionally accomplished and possess decades of experience and skills, to begin activating this mechanism so that they can afterward smoothly enter the countryside, become stakeholders, and contribute what they have learned throughout their lives. Once this mechanism is established, an endless stream of diverse knowledge will enter the countryside through such flows.

Compared with the high efficiency, tight pace of life, and cost of living of the city, the countryside is a place more suitable for retired groups to live. These people who enter the countryside do not necessarily have to farm; they can also develop distinctive communities, for example: music villages, art villages, ecological villages... Perhaps someone may also ask, agriculture is extremely physically demanding work, so how can retired people bear it?

Let me tell you, the agriculture of the future is knowledge-intensive agriculture, not technology-intensive, capital-intensive, or still less labor-intensive agriculture. As long as we make good use of the knowledge of agroecology, make good use of the achievements of human civilization, clean energy, and understand nature and cooperate with nature, farm work will become interesting, even poetic.

In addition, in an era of frequent extreme climate, sharply reduced food-producing regions and yields, energy shortages, and water resource emergencies, we all know how to make the countryside and agriculture an important key to helping humanity get through these difficulties, rather than becoming another source of pollution. This requires a large number of people capable of careful deliberation and with rich experience.

In terms of population movement, the civilized system constructed by humanity is like building a highway that lets cars quickly reach the end, and then get stuck there. Our education, job market, and cultural development all rapidly carry people toward the city, and then what? Our wisdom, knowledge, and abilities ultimately end up buried in this giant parking lot. "Bringing diverse knowledge into the countryside" will connect this knowledge and ability back to the land, and give the bearers of this knowledge a comfortable and grounded final stage of life.

This idea is not new

There was once a group of people in Taiwan, China who, in order to emigrate to Canada or New Zealand, spent many years before retirement putting in great effort, preparing large amounts of money, obtaining qualifications, and fulfilling residency requirements, and finally succeeded in emigrating to other countries. Leaving aside whether they truly found happiness in life afterward, seeking a dream homeland for oneself requires preparation from very early on.

In 2004, a survey targeting the three major metropolitan areas of northern, central, and southern Taiwan, China showed that nearly 50% of urban residents wanted to return to rural life, and among them 80% wanted to own a plot of land after age 40. In fact, the rural countryside of Taiwan, China is also an "immigration paradise" in the minds of many people.

Therefore, design an interesting 5~7 year long-term plan so that wave after wave of soon-to-retire people can understand the rural context and the principles of farming, and make psychological preparations for a major life transformation. Try to imagine that working in the fields can train muscle strength, increase cardiorespiratory function, and sculpt the body. Rethink hats, shoes, clothes, and pants: what materials and styles are most suitable for wearing during farm work, practical yet aesthetically pleasing. How can the tools used fit the human body, not cause injury, and save effort? Do new farming methods require new farm tools to match?

Taiwan, China has already invested too many resources in urban and industrial development. It is time now: the fruits of human civilization should turn back to defend the foundation of our survival, the countryside and agriculture.

What should be done?

In raising this idea here, my aim is nothing other than to awaken people with urban and rural experience who intend to return to the countryside to think together. Of course, I hope even more that agricultural administration units can awaken: a new era has arrived, humanity faces enormous challenges, and the key core of their solution lies in agriculture, in the sound development of soil, plants, ecology, production, and distribution. Do not keep doing hardware construction that beautifies the countryside and strange subsidy measures intended to avoid criticism; be a wise integrator, knowing the key role of the future countryside and where the people who can help you are. I truly hope agricultural administration units can use part of the Rural Regeneration funds to pave this road for bringing diverse knowledge into the countryside. The method is actually not difficult.

Understanding: the first step must be to establish a plan that lets people understand the countryside as a whole

In the past, the Council of Agriculture promoted the "Wandering Bird Project" and the "Gardener Project," but how many people truly returned to the countryside? What happened after they returned? Because there is no survey data, I will not comment, but if the content could be further improved and, through social education methods, combined over the long term with community college courses, to explore:

• The essence of the countryside and agriculture: from international to local, from ecology to industry, an understanding of the essence of the countryside and agriculture.
• The basic theory and farming methods of agriculture: cultivate participants' relevant literacy in understanding soil, ecology, plants, and crops, so that they possess the ability to grow crops, understand the "ins and outs," and increase their sense of land and local identity.
• Provide a large number of reference cases: let participants, before truly returning home, have abundant reference materials, making future rural life more concrete and more directional.
• Land ethics, rural sustainability, governance for urban-rural co-prosperity, and others.

When the course comes to an end, we do not want the students to scatter. Near their workplaces, we will establish testing farms and guide them into farm operations.

Bases: widely establish Community Supported Agriculture Testing Plots

In areas where city and countryside meet, establish satellite-style small-scale sustainable community-supported farms in cooperation with local rural communities and farmers. Let local farmers serve as farm consultants, assist in planning farm work, and coordinate local resources. Let these soon-to-retire people who have taken the courses no longer each look for land on their own, but instead, nearby, through the community-supported agriculture model, build their own food circles, choose nearby farms, use the few hours before and after work to participate in simple farm work, and on holidays also act as weekend farmers. Testing farms can let them actually experience the changes of the solar terms and the pulse of the land, actually turn knowledge into action, and gain healthy practical experience.

Intervention: when technology yearns to participate in the countryside

There are two problems when technology enters the countryside. First, the countryside cannot afford it. Second, how should environmental assessment be done? When many friends with technology backgrounds enter testing farms and become stakeholders, the application of technology in the countryside gains a new opportunity. In Taitung, rice husk carbonization technology carbonizes rice husks and successfully reduces fertilizer consumption by 30%, and the Water Resources Agency has also conducted a survey of micro-hydropower generation systems. These are all technologies very worth using in the countryside.

Conclusion

This matter will be very difficult at the start, because we do not have such training. The way we are accustomed to is to unchangingly appropriate the urban model, but urban life, logic of thought, and cultural background are all different from the countryside. The countryside is not a place one level lower than the city. To think about a way out for the countryside, we must have the same, or even more rigorous and serious, attitude as the city. How they face important issues and how they crack difficult problems is very worth referencing; they too went through a hard training stage, so that now a bunch of people can handle such things with ease. This group of people who think in the countryside and for the countryside, I hope, can gather in the countryside as soon as possible.

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Dong Jian-hong