Land hoarding and speculation in industrial zones, farmland innocently affected
Taiwanese businessman returns home: Shengzhou Enterprise wants to build a factory on farmland in Longquan, Pingtung, and local residents strongly protest, not wanting the farmland to be polluted. Outsiders ask why the company does not move into an existing industrial zone and instead insists on buying farmland and then having it rezoned for industrial use. But Shengzhou general manager Yang Ming-shun responded that a suitable industrial zone in Pingtung is asking 70,000 yuan per ping, and calculated at 4 hectares, the land cost alone would be nearly 900 million yuan, so buying farmland to build a factory and change its use is a choice made out of necessity.
The Ministry of Audit estimates that there are 337 qing of idle industrial land nationwide, but most of it is visible yet out of reach. Some factory zones are poorly planned and unsuitable for use, and even more of the land has already been sold off and flowed into the real estate market for speculation, with prices staying high and a single plot often worth over 100 million yuan. Business operators who need land have no choice but to turn to cheaper farmland, and some even simply put up corrugated iron sheds to run illegal factories, quietly waiting for a chance to be "legalized on site." If the industrial land problem is not solved, the sad song of farmland pollution will continue to play out.
Legislator Tsai Pei-hui believes the Ministry of Economic Affairs should come up with a way to recover idle industrial zone land. (Photo / Li Hui-yi)
IV. If the demand for industrial land is not solved, more farmland is waiting to become factories
Since industrial zone land is hard to obtain and there is still development demand, business operators turn their sights to cheaper farmland. Moreover, in practice many operators hope to change the land category, converting land from farmland to Type-D building land, or find political agents to include farmland in an urban planning zone and then seize the opportunity to turn it into an industrial zone.
Although Shengzhou acquired the land through court auction, a search of the neighboring Neipu Zhaosheng Section plots No. 130 to 150 through the real estate actual price registration system shows that between 2013 and 2015 the price of farmland per ping ranged from 0.5 to 20,000 yuan, which cannot compare at all with industrial zone land that often costs 40,000 to 50,000 yuan.
However, according to reporters from Newsmarket, this area may still be farmland recognized by the Council of Agriculture as superior agricultural land. To align with the National Land Planning Act, which will be formally completed in 6 to 7 years, the Council of Agriculture once surveyed and graded farmland nationwide. Among these, Grade 1 farmland corresponds to "special farmland" under the current Regional Planning Act, that is, the most superior farmland that should be preserved as a priority. And although relevant Council of Agriculture personnel did not say outright that Shengzhou's 33 plots are Grade 1 farmland, they also did not clearly deny it.
At the same time, in the past many operators simply ignored the law and directly put up corrugated iron sheds on farmland to do business, which is what created the situation in which much farmland has been polluted and cannot be cultivated. Although the Ministry of Economic Affairs once proposed a "legalization on site" plan for polluted farmland factories, outsiders question that once this door is opened, it is tantamount to encouraging more factories to destroy farmland through a "pollute first, legalize later" model.
If the industrial land needs of business operators cannot be solved at the source, cases of improper use of farmland will inevitably continue to occur.