Farmland Being Devoured, Liao Pen-chuan Calls for a Thorough Review of the Institutional Gaps
Photography / Kuo Chih-jung
For a long time, Taiwan's rural farming communities have served as a tool for national economic development, while agriculture has been reduced to an appendage of urban civilization and has never been affirmed. Rural farming communities are not only a "grain storehouse" providing food and a "people storehouse" supplying urban labor, but have also become a "land storehouse" from which urban and industrial development seizes land and a "water storehouse" from which it seizes water. The agricultural authority (the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan) has likewise become a weak, even self-effacing, appendage within the administrative system.
At present, farmland faces two main challenges from external forces. The first is the conversion of agricultural land into urban or industrial land in the name of urban or industrial development, swallowing whole parcels of farmland. The second is the construction of luxury residences in the name of building farmhouses, nibbling away at farmland. These two challenges will create a farmland and food crisis in Taiwan, and the fact is that Taiwan has long been in crisis.
A classic case of farmland being devoured is the "Taiwan Knowledge Economy Flagship Park Specific Area Plan" (known as the Puyu Plan) in Zhubei, Hsinchu. This case brings together a land-development bloc of industry, government and academia, ignores the runaway nature of Taiwan's urban development, and demarcates 447 hectares of farmland in Zhubei and Qionglin beside the Hsinchu Liujia High Speed Rail Station, more than 90 percent of which is designated special agricultural zone, yet allows town-building speculation, the extraction of land profits, and the conversion of farmland and the destruction of the multiple values of agricultural production. Can the Council of Agriculture bravely step forward to defend the fine farmland of Puyu?
The construction of luxury residences on farmland in the name of farmhouses stems from an institutional door thrown open, namely the 2000 amendment of the "Agricultural Development Act," which not only opened farmland to free buying and selling and farmhouse construction, but also allowed farmhouses to be built on newly purchased farmland, amounting to a full opening. In 2001, the Ministry of the Interior (Construction and Planning Agency) and the Council of Agriculture formulated the "Regulations for the Construction of Farmhouses on Agricultural Land," attempting to regulate the qualifications of farmhouse applicants and building standards. But once the institutional gap is opened, it is hard to restrict again, especially given the unclear definitions of farmers and agricultural use, and the delegation of review and determination to local governments, resulting today in luxury farmhouses everywhere and a chaos in which central and local interpretations are at odds.
Faced with speculative farmland trading and the construction of luxury residences, the Ministry of the Interior (Construction and Planning Agency) and the Council of Agriculture have begun to amend the "Regulations for the Construction of Farmhouses on Agricultural Land," adding requirements such as "applicants must not hold a full-time occupation other than farming" as a substantive qualification review for farmer status, and providing for areas where farmhouse construction is prohibited, as well as further regulating the construction of clustered farmhouses. But this amendment (draft) met strong opposition from building investors, real estate agents and politicians at a public briefing on July 5 of this year (2011).
The Council of Agriculture should make good use of the dispute over farmhouse construction to strengthen its function as the competent authority defending agriculture and farmland. On the one hand, it should stop, within the system, the devouring of farmland by urban and industrial land development; on the other, it should immediately carry out reform at the source of the system, assessing the policy effects of the Agricultural Development Act amendment, analyzing the problems presented by farmhouse construction over the past ten years, understanding the current living conditions and needs of farmers, and reviewing and amending (even repealing) Article 18 of the Agricultural Development Act.
In short, what the Council of Agriculture should do most is:
- Thoroughly examine itself;
- Strengthen its position within the administrative system;
- Review the door-opening mechanism so that the institutional gap disappears.
Only in this way can it truly return to the spirit of land justice, fulfill the duties and responsibilities of the central agricultural competent authority, and give Taiwan's rural farming communities a chance to return to what they ought to be and inherently are. (The author is an associate professor in the Department of Real Estate and Built Environment at National Taipei University.)
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