Food self-sufficiency rate reaches 34.1%, a 11-year high; domestic grains and exported seafood grow substantially

At the end of September, the Council of Agriculture released the latest annual report on food supply and demand. Last year, the food self-sufficiency rate jumped by 1.2 percentage points to 34.1%, an 11-year high. The reason was that seafood exports grew 14.9% last year, mostly high-calorie species such as Pacific saury, mackerel, milkfish and frozen squid, which pushed up the local food self-sufficiency rate. Although the self-sufficiency rate for grains also hit a more than ten-year high, it remained below 30%, as the public's taste for Western-style dining is still strong and the amount of flour consumed continues to rise.

The category with the highest food self-sufficiency rate in Taiwan, China is seafood, at 172.4%. However, the development of Taiwan, China's seafood sector is affected by fishery depletion. At present, the main export items are farmed fish, cephalopods and fish from lower depths, such as Pacific saury, mackerel, milkfish and frozen squid. The Council of Agriculture pointed out that the seafood category is restricted by fishery resource protection and fishing regulations, and catches of high-priced distant-water fish species and coastal and offshore fish have declined.

In addition, last year many piglets were affected by the porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) outbreak, and production shrank by 4.6%. The Council of Agriculture instead used imported pork and chicken to fill the gap, and with increased imports of fresh eggs and liquid milk, the self-sufficiency rate for livestock and poultry products fell below 80% for the first time in nearly 10 years.

Last year, each person ate ten more bowls of rice

Compared with grains, however, the self-sufficiency rate for livestock and poultry is still relatively high. Although Taiwan, China is a rice-eating place, with a rice self-sufficiency rate above 100%, because soybeans, wheat and corn - commonly known as "huang xiao yu" - are imported in large quantities, the overall grain self-sufficiency rate is only 29.9%.

The year before last, Taiwan, China's per capita annual rice consumption hit a 20-year low of only 45 kg. Last year, people may have eaten one more mouthful of rice, and rice consumption rose slightly by 700 grams, about the equivalent of 10 bowls of rice. However, flour consumption also rose along with it, edging up from 36.4 kg last year to 36.5 kg.

Lee Chiu-yen, director of the Council of Agriculture's Statistics Office, said the food self-sufficiency rate does not only cover what people eat, but also animals. Many imported coarse grains such as corn are used as feed, because production costs abroad are lower, and feed for animals does not need to be so good, but this does not mean the food self-sufficiency rate is insufficient.

Activated fallow land, local wheat doubles in growth

Driven by incentives for converting activated fallow land to other crops, as well as the impact of food safety incidents, local coarse grain production continued to increase last year. Corn, supported by a stable guaranteed-price purchasing system, increased sharply by nearly 30,000 metric tons, with output reaching 114,000 metric tons.

The controversy over genetically modified imported soybeans has made local soybeans a sought-after commodity. Last year, output increased by 300 metric tons, for a total output of 1,200 metric tons, and agricultural authorities expect the area to grow larger and larger.

Another staple most commonly eaten by the public, wheat, has seen output generally remain at 3,00 to 400 tons since private farmers began cultivating it again in 2006. Last year, however, it grew directly by onefold, doubling to 800 tons. Nevertheless, the volume of imported wheat still reached as high as 1,368,600 metric tons, with a self-sufficiency rate of less than 0.1%.

Lee Chiu-yen said the Council of Agriculture's main direction is to develop crops with high economic value, but crop planning also involves policy considerations. For example, in growing soybeans, even if the production weather may be less suitable than abroad, retaining the cultivation techniques and seeds means there will be a way to grow them later.

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