Food Day Recap: Our Attitudes and Responsibilities Toward What We Eat

In the Christian Lord's Prayer, Jesus taught his disciples: "Give us this day our daily bread." This shows how urgent and important the food people face each day is. For poor countries facing hunger, having enough to eat is the assurance of heaven; at the same time, it reminds us to reflect on and examine our attitudes and responsibilities regarding food.

Food self-sufficiency rate remains depressingly low

Every year at 4 p.m. on September 30, the Council of Agriculture releases the "Food Supply and Demand Annual Report" for the previous year. In 2012, Taiwan's food self-sufficiency rate calculated by calories was 32.7%, a decrease of 1.2% from 2011. Compared with President Ma Ying-jeou's 2011 declaration at the "National Food Security Conference" that the food self-sufficiency rate would return to the 1993 level of 40% by 2020, this was another step backward.

The data shows that although the rice self-sufficiency rate reached 106.9%, the self-sufficiency rate of whole grains was only 27.1%. Influenced by the westernization of diets and the convenience of eating, Taiwanese society, traditionally rice-eating, has shifted toward diets including bread and noodles, and demand for wheat has increased year by year. Until 2012, the proportion of calories supplied to the people still showed a trend of lower white rice and higher flour. Compared with 10 years earlier, the former's proportion decreased by 0.7 percentage points, while the latter increased by 1.2 percentage points. In other words, demand for wheat is still increasing, while rice is still bursting out of the granaries.

On the other hand, Taiwan's level of direct consumption of soybeans and related soy products is far higher than that of Europe and the United States, yet it imports genetically modified soybeans produced in countries such as the United States, Brazil and Argentina. In these countries, soy products are mostly used to feed economic animals and produce milk and meat, not for direct human consumption, so the impact of the risk of eating GM crops is smaller than for the people of Taiwan, who consume them directly. To date, Taiwan has more than 8,000 hectares of edamame for export each year, yet is unable to produce soybeans for food, presenting an extremely absurd picture.

Activating fallow land

Compared with relying on imported food, Taiwan currently has as much as several hundred thousand hectares of fallow land. Taiwan implemented a fallow system because of its accession to the WTO. Over 27 years, about 200,000 hectares of land have not produced anything each year, and about 10 billion in subsidy funds have been used, yielding neither job opportunities nor food production. Large tracts of farmland sit idle and unproductive, and the government still allocates large sums each year to subsidize fallow farmers. Fallow farmland not only fails to produce but also increases the fiscal burden, which is highly contradictory.

In order to raise the food self-sufficiency rate, the Agriculture and Food Agency of the Council of Agriculture launched the "Fallow Farmland Activation Plan," giving priority to activating 50,000 hectares of farmland that had been fallow for two consecutive crop seasons. In the future, fallow subsidies will be provided for only one crop season a year; if the other crop season is planted with eligible incentive crops such as soybeans, wheat and corn to replace imported coarse grains, subsidies can also be received. However, for the crops grown, only feed companies are encouraged to purchase them, and the related industrial chain has yet to be established.

Shih Ming-huang, director of Xiyuan Hang, said that for every 1% rise in international grain prices, wealthy countries merely pay a little more to buy food, but for poor countries it means more people go hungry, or even starve to death. Taiwan should view the food security issue from a macro perspective and fulfill its responsibility for food production.

Adjusting dietary habits

Taiwan has long been addicted to cheap imported coarse grains. In addition to wheat supplying pasta and bread, soybeans and corn are mainly used as feed for farmed animals. These animals, which serve as sources of milk, eggs and meat, appear on the surface to provide food self-sufficiency, yet they conceal a huge gap in food supply. Once international grain prices rise, daily necessities rise along with them, and there is no capacity to respond. At the other end of the granary is rice, overflowing in abundance, and handling stored grain has also become a burden for the government. Recently, also for the sake of cheapness, several large but unscrupulous grain dealers were exposed for using imported rice to replace Taiwan-grown rice.

In terms of the structure of food, the rice warehouse is bursting at the seams, while wheat, corn, soybeans and dairy products are insufficient. 90% of feed comes from imported coarse grains. Even if one supports locally produced milk, meat and eggs, one still cannot escape the fact that the feed for these farmed animals is all imported coarse grains.

In terms of food security, apart from more than 1 million metric tons of rice that can be controlled, other cereal crops and coarse grains cannot be controlled. To raise the food self-sufficiency rate and safeguard food security, the only way is to change the dietary structure, including encouraging local eating, eating more rice, and reducing meat consumption. Otherwise, it will be a road of no return.

Taiwan's so-called huang xiao yu (soybeans, wheat and corn) require imports of 10 million metric tons a year. Even if all fallow farmland, calculated at 500,000 hectares, produced the best yield of 4 metric tons per hectare, or 2 million metric tons a year, and were all planted with rice and coarse grains, it still could not change the fate of having to import coarse grains.

Ecological agriculture helps food security

Taiwan not only has to face an insufficient food self-sufficiency rate, but must also acknowledge the reality of a 0.6% energy self-sufficiency rate. Once international oil prices climb steadily, they also affect the prices of imported food. With oil prices, rising imported food prices have already become the norm, while climate factors determine the extent of the increase. Changing agricultural methods is probably a reality that cannot be avoided.

Taiwan has been promoting organic agriculture for about 20 years, but by 2010 organic farmland still accounted for only 0.5-0.7% of all farmland. Scholars pointed out that unless there is a policy transformation that redirects the effort spent encouraging conventional farming toward organic agriculture, change cannot happen.

Conventional farming relies heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which some scholars describe as "intensive care unit-style agriculture." Once oil is exhausted, no food can be grown. If organic agriculture is not promoted now, by the time people cannot afford food, it may be too late.

Waste in rivers

There are limits to farmland development, so cherishing and making good use of existing food becomes even more important. On September 11, the United Nations even released the report "Food Wastage Footprint: Impacts on Natural Resources," pointing out that each year one-third of the world's food, as much as 1.3 billion metric tons, is wasted, causing an annual economic loss of 750 billion US dollars and enormous environmental costs. A report published by the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers, meanwhile, held that as much as one-half of global food production (about 2 billion metric tons) is wasted.

Researchers found that producing this wasted food each year uses almost a year's flow of Russia's Volga River. This uneaten food occupies nearly 1.4 billion hectares of land, equal to 28% of the world's farmland area; what is more, this uneaten food adds 3.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases to the Earth.

At the beginning of this year, the United Nations launched a global campaign "Think, Eat, Save: Reduce Your Foodprint," calling on consumers and food retailers worldwide to take some simple actions, such as offering smaller portions when ordering in restaurants, storing surplus food in freezers for use, or donating it to food banks to provide for homeless people or families in need. All of these can bring about change. Retailers and convenience stores should stock more carefully and work closely with suppliers to reduce food waste. In this way, it is estimated that 1.3 billion metric tons of food waste can be reduced each year.

Taiwan does not have an all-you-can-eat dietary habit, yet influenced by Western culture, there are many "Buffet" all-you-can-eat eateries. Consumers overeat in order to get their money's worth. To reduce overeating, it is necessary to re-examine dietary attitudes and habits. It is best to start from traditional dietary culture and find the way in Taiwan's traditional diet to keep the body lean and healthy.

The dilemma of eating

It is hard to imagine that at one end of the food scale waste flows like a river, while at the other end nearly 840 million people are chronically hungry and undernourished. According to estimates in "The State of Food and Agriculture," 2 billion people are malnourished, 1.4 billion are overweight, of whom 500 million are obese; 26% of children under 5 worldwide are stunted. Malnutrition among women and infants and young children damages the quality of life and lifespan of millions of people, while health problems caused by obesity, such as heart disease and diabetes, affect even more people and place a burden on the medical system. The social and economic costs of malnutrition are unacceptable.

On Food Day 2013, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization recommended that countries launch a series of agricultural and food system policy reforms, from the way food is grown, produced, processed, transported, packaged, labeled and sold, to make food more affordable, diverse and nutritious.

Unease over food

In Taiwan, by contrast, in recent years food safety problems such as plasticizers, ractopamine and toxic starch have occurred one after another. Even earlier, there were the mad cow disease crisis implicit in US beef, avian influenza, rice noodles that turned out not to be made from rice, and more recently the case of the "Fatty Master" brand claiming natural additive-free bread but testing positive for the use of multiple food additives. All these incidents leave everyone feeling unsafe, and no clues can be seen even by reading labels. Buying everyday food carries a psychological burden, and it would be hard for this society not to go crazy.

In addition, advertising has dominated people's dietary tendencies and also increased health concerns. An October 2012 survey by the Child Welfare League Foundation pointed out that more than one-third of the advertisements children in Taiwan are exposed to are junk food ads, and during mealtimes and cartoon program hours, a junk food ad appears every 6.6 minutes. The frequency of such advertisements is too high, and children are easily prompted to desire them and eat too much junk food. More than a dozen countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, South Korea and Canada, have already established methods to regulate junk food advertising, while Taiwan so far lacks even a definition, allowing junk food ads to flood everywhere.

The ages at which some diseases such as kidney disease and dialysis occur tend to be declining, and National Health Insurance spending has risen accordingly. According to data from the Department of Health, in 2011 Taiwan's National Health Expenditure (NHE) was 910.3 billion yuan, an increase of 2.6% over the previous year, while gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 1.0% annually.

A health examination report released by the Department of Health (November 2012) showed that Taiwanese people eat a lot, eat well and exercise little, making Taiwan the country with the most severe obesity in Asia. The obesity rate is as high as one-half among adult men, one-third among adult women, and one-quarter among children; Taiwan's obesity rate is 12 times that of South Korea and 8 times that of Japan.

Food companies, in pursuit of profit, use every means to squeeze money out of consumers' pockets. This is originally the logic of capitalist business, but the government has laws to regulate yet manages loosely and fails in its duty to check. These factors are all unfavorable to consumers, making consumer awareness even more important.

Eating well for national strength

How to eat just enough and healthily, so that agriculture is sustainable, the land and environment are protected, and people even avoid neglecting the meaning behind food that is too easily obtained - an egg costs 3-5 yuan on average yet comes from a laying hen that has never touched soil - and can also take animal welfare into account, requires learning and education.

How one eats is very important. Civil society groups recommend eating more local and seasonal food; before buying a product, read the labeled ingredients, expiration date, storage method and nutritional content; avoid food ingredients that cannot be read, cannot be pronounced, or whose purpose is not understood, because they are very likely chemically synthesized; and prefer to pay a little more for healthy ingredients and then eat a little less, among other things.

Some legislators have already advocated following Japan's food education example by enacting a "Dietary Education Act." Civil society hopes to incorporate food production and agriculture together into the bill, starting from a basic law and gradually building a complete food and agriculture education system, rooting it downward through community-building networks. It is hoped that through the correct dietary attitudes of the people, responding to God's promise, food production can feed the people, and farmers, health, the environment, and even the unique culture nurtured on this land of ours can all receive the best care.