7 Billion Invested to Promote 2,000 Hectares Over Five Years to Strengthen Greenhouses: Growers Ask, How Can We Build Without Materials or Labor?
To stabilise domestic vegetable and fruit production, the Council of Agriculture (COA) will spend 7 billion over five years to subsidise farmers in building "reinforced greenhouse and net houses," so that they do not collapse the moment a typhoon blows in; the programme targets 2000 hectares. Although the policy is well intentioned, farmers and facility operators in the trade question it: at present only just over 70 operators in the country are capable of building greenhouse and net houses, and most of their orders are already booked to the end of the year. Farmers and facility operators widely doubt that the government's goal of 400 hectares a year is just pie in the sky.
Other greenhouse operators complain that the COA is lax in its management of greenhouse and net houses: it only sets requirements for the greenhouse specification, but does not regulate material specifications, so that for the same type of greenhouse some people use pipes costing 100 yuan and others use ones costing 300 yuan. Some operators have already relocated to mainland China, because China offers more subsidies and its standards are more complete.
Facility orders are already booked to the end of the year. How can the government's vision be met?
At present, farmland across Taiwan, China used for greenhouses, net houses, mushroom sheds and other facilities totals 10,313 hectares, but more than 80 percent of that is simple greenhouse and net houses, whose wind resistance is clearly insufficient. For this reason, at the end of last year the COA announced that from this year it would guide 400 hectares a year, and 2000 hectares over five years, towards the construction of reinforced greenhouses with concrete foundations, plastic sheeting or steel frames, or reinforced horizontal trellis net houses, raising the subsidy ratio from 1/3 in the past to one half.
Since this policy was announced, farmers and facility operators have widely questioned it, saying the government's goal of 400 hectares a year is pie in the sky. Hsieh Chun-hung, chairman of the Chiayi County Fine Agriculture Association, who has 18 years of experience in facility cultivation, said that many facility operators' orders are already booked to the end of the year, and if no more new building operators join in, by the time the COA publishes the new greenhouse and net house review rules in March or April, "I estimate that the area for which applications are then submitted and construction carried out will not exceed 20 percent."
There are about just over 70 facility operators in the country. Large facility horticulture companies usually have 5 or 6 work crews on hand, medium-sized operators have 2 or 3, while the numerous small operators usually have only 1 crew building greenhouse and net houses. Li Chun-wang, owner of Chengshun Greenhouse and Net House Engineering, a medium-sized operator, said that generally speaking one crew takes a month to build a reinforced greenhouse over three fen of land; he has 3 crews, so in a month he can build at most one jia, and over a year at most 12 jia (about 11.64 hectares) of reinforced greenhouses.
"But that is under conditions of no rest and no typhoon damage to greenhouse and net houses, whereas in reality July and August every year are maintenance periods, especially for crops such as solanaceous plants and coloured peppers that are popular in winter; these farmers very much need greenhouse repairs at that time."
COA admits facility manpower is insufficient, will open training courses with the Ministry of Labor
Faced with the manpower problem raised by farmers and facility operators, Weng Chen-hsin, chief secretary of the COA's Agriculture and Food Agency, admitted that the current capacity of domestic facility operators is indeed insufficient, so the COA has recently submitted a plan to the Executive Yuan, hoping in future to strengthen training of talent in this area through cross-ministerial cooperation with the Ministry of Labor and the Construction and Planning Agency.
Fang Yi-dan, head of the Crop Production Division of the Agriculture and Food Agency, explained that the manpower training plan currently under discussion with the Ministry of Labor has three categories. Two of them are respectively relevant construction personnel who already have a building foundation and existing greenhouse and net house operators; because these people already have basic skills, with about four weeks of enhanced courses they can obtain a completion certificate. The other category is training for unemployed manpower; these people have to start learning from basic theory, with total training hours of more than 100 hours, and courses will start as soon as enough people form a class and instructors are in place.
As for farmers' mention that if the 2000 hectares of greenhouse and net houses have no strategic planning, future vegetable and fruit market prices may be affected, Weng Chen-hsin said the type of greenhouse and net houses the COA is promoting this time is the reinforced type, unlike the simple type that was the main focus of Yunlin's push years ago. Reinforced greenhouse and net houses cost over a million per hectare, a high funding threshold, precisely in the hope of attracting professional farmers, or farmers whose current greenhouse structures are relatively fragile, to build the enhanced version. "Under this restriction, the vegetable and fruit area will not increase much; rather, the structure of the greenhouses built will be strengthened, so farmers need not worry excessively."