What Is a Shameful Landscape? A Article to Help You Understand

Regarding the recently heated policy of demolishing illegal buildings on agricultural land that have clustered together to form factories, there is an online joke

Council of Agriculture: Report to the Premier, at present no illegal factories can be found on agricultural land.

Premier of the Executive Yuan: Then why was it said at the beginning that there were more than 200?

Council of Agriculture: Because the local governments said they only knew that the Ming dynasty had the Eastern Depot and the Western Depot, and could not find any such thing as an illegal factory.

Premier of the Executive Yuan: Very good. It can be seen that after we took office on 520, administrative efficiency has been extremely high, and illegal factories no longer appear.

So it turned into wanting to demolish illegal factories, only to find that there are simply no illegal factories to demolish

Let us look at what the Ministry of Economic Affairs prescribed in accordance with Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the Factory Management and Guidance Act (hereinafter referred to as this Act)

"Standards for Determining the Scope of Manufacturing and Processing of Goods by Factories, and the Scale of Floor Area, Electric Power Capacity, and Heat Energy" requires meeting three criteria before something can be called a "factory"

First: it must fall within the medium categories of Category C, the manufacturing industry, in the Republic of China Standard Industrial Classification compiled and printed by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of the Executive Yuan, from Category 8, food manufacturing, to Category 33, other manufacturing, as the principle for determination.

Second: a certain floor area means the factory building area reaches 50 sq m or more;

Third: a certain electric power capacity and heat energy means horsepower and electric heat combined reach 2.25 kilowatts or more.

Therefore, by narrowing its own scope of authority, the "factories" seen everywhere in Taiwan are not factories at all, and now the Council of Agriculture is in an awkward spot
If it had known earlier, it should have announced the demolition of factories not recognized by the "Ministry of Economic Affairs"

In fact, the Council of Agriculture should have made things clear... then factory owners would jump out and admit that their own factories are factories recognized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Some factory managers play word games: by partitioning off a factory section (saying the other side is residential use and not part of the factory scope) so the area drops below 50 sq m, or by stopping work and temporarily moving machinery away on the day of inspection (no manufacturing or processing activity), or by reducing horsepower and breaking things up into parts, it can be determined not to be a factory.

Therefore, the factories the Council of Agriculture vowed to demolish naturally cannot be found, and moreover, which agency would play the villain, determining under the eyes of county and city mayors that an illegal operation is a "factory" and letting these illegal golden geese be listed for demolition?

Turning next to the policy of legalizing large, clustered areas of illegal factories on agricultural and pastoral land in special agricultural zones; it is currently being carried out ambiguously, and there is still no conclusion on whether to approve it or to eliminate it with resolve.

The destruction of agricultural land or important wetlands does not stop there; the policy slogan of a nuclear-free homeland releases large amounts of agricultural land and wetlands that should be protected, letting green energy facilities move in; in fact, these so-called green energies, which appear environmentally friendly, are not actually so. The environmental impact of green energy facilities has not been established by objective experimental data; but what can immediately be seen is that fertile farmland and wetlands that conserve soil and water are about to disappear.

Why do people always fail to understand the situation, wanting to plant electricity in places suitable for growing crops; while in cities and industrial zones with high electricity demand, green energy generation is promoted only in tiny numbers, yet urban buildings are encouraged to grow flowers and plants, or to make rooftop vegetable gardens... is this not a rather bizarre behavior.

If the legalization of illegal factories on agricultural land truly cannot be avoided, they should be required to set aside green energy generation on 80% or more of their area. In fact, this would be a more practical way of giving back, rather than the current approach of legalizing them. This disguised encouragement of legalization actually only satisfies the political needs of local county and city heads (consideration of votes).

Here I also hope that in the near future, political figures intending to run for county and city mayor can put forward policy views on how to handle the problem of illegal factories within their jurisdictions, especially the major agricultural counties and cities in central and southern Taiwan. Do not push agricultural subsidy policies every election to trick voters, while the loss of agricultural land never stops.

Finally, I deeply feel that among the public departments of county and city governments at the grassroots level, agricultural administration units can be said to be the weakest. On the surface, slogans emphasizing agriculture are shouted forcefully, but in practice, whenever economic development is involved, what is sacrificed is agricultural resources, and what is even more despicable is that it is almost always the agricultural administration units that come out to cripple themselves, and they even have to help explain the rationality, necessity, and irreplaceability of releasing agricultural resources, which is utterly unwilling; yet in the end the credit goes to the development proposal units that should most bear responsibility.

Recently many people are promoting edible landscapes, or landscape art; I sincerely hope we do not let the landscapes of Taiwan, piece by piece, all become scenes for factories; then that would truly be a shameful landscape, not an edible landscape or landscape art.