Rice Wave Forum joins hands with Hualien Permaculture Tribe to jointly create the Dreamland
Recorder: A-Chun, Hualien Permaculture volunteer
Preface: The Rice Wave Forum in Hualien
The Rice Wave Forum, after visiting farmer friends in Yilan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Changhua and Kaohsiung, held its final session at the Biyunzhuang Community Activity Center in Hualien. The Hualien session was assisted by the Hualien Permaculture Tribe community, which invited friends in Hualien concerned about agricultural issues to join the discussion.
Founded in 2010, the Hualien Permaculture Tribe has gathered many Hualien locals and new migrants interested in friendly farming methods and sustainable living. Over these years, through free permaculture courses and lectures, members have learned together, pooling much life wisdom, and have also taken concrete action, hoping to jointly practice the permaculture spirit of "care for the earth, care for people, share the surplus" in order to build the dream land of Huilan in their hearts. Many members of the community have already begun practicing "half farming, half X" or are already full-time farmers.
At the opening, Teacher Cai Peihui of the Taiwan Rural Front spoke about how Hualien, being agriculture-based, has in recent years faced forces of external development that seem to grow more urgent by the day. In Taiwan there were once certain semi-public agricultural services, such as the agricultural research and extension stations that develop new varieties and agricultural technology, the farmers' associations that help small farmers with market access and low-interest credit loans, and the irrigation associations responsible for farmland irrigation. In recent years, swept by neoliberalism, Taiwan has increasingly wanted to be drawn into the world economic system, and government public policy has increasingly leaned toward big capital, causing the systems that originally served small farmers to gradually vanish.
The action of taking to the Ketagalan Boulevard on February 3 this time is not only a protest against the government's improper policies, but also an effort to consolidate the voices of farmers and those concerned about agriculture from all regions, turning them into a basis for action and demanding that the government change.
Bo-Ren of the Taiwan Rural Front added an explanation for everyone, speaking about this cooperation with the cross-national farmers' organization La Via Campesina, which put forward the proposition of "food sovereignty": emphasizing that people, without infringing on the rights of others, have the right to decide what to eat and what to grow, and that farmers' right to cultivate and people's right to obtain food take priority over the right of corporations to profit.
