A Cartoonist's Illustrated Guide to Agricultural Issues: Get Started with Caring About Agriculture for the First Time
Although the movement to occupy the Legislative Yuan has come to an end, all kinds of issues have blossomed everywhere. A comic titled "How Can Consumers Save Taiwan's Agriculture?" has gone viral online, calling on the public to eat more rice to defend food sovereignty. In just two weeks it drew more than 110,000 views. The humorous and playful chibi-style art comes from the hand of a young comic artist, Yao Yi (pronounced like "yao ye"), who is usually a SOHO artist drawing at home. Moved by the passion of the people on site, she decided to "do what she can do," and now even plans to go on strike until the end of July to draw five volumes of comics on the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement and agriculture.
Chibi-Style Comics Tell the Battle Between Rice and Wheat
Yao Yi has long cared about environmental issues, such as the Dapu land expropriation case, the Miaoli leopard cat, and the Tzu Chi Neihu development case, but going out on the streets was still a first for her. She showed up in support on the second day of the Legislative Yuan occupation, and even slept on the main road.
After the occupation ended, she drew on her own blog, "That night, in front of the Legislative Yuan, I made a decision. I want to draw what happened here." She decided to go on a self-imposed "strike" until the end of July, devoting all her time to comics about the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, with a tentative plan to publish five volumes, whose themes are respectively the impact of the agreement on Taiwan's medical and health insurance systems, and agriculture and Taiwan's free economic pilot zones.
Information about the service trade agreement is overwhelming, but Yao Yi believes that traditional media still has not neutrally and objectively conveyed the movement's demands, so she hopes the comics can reach "ordinary people who do not read online news and only look at traditional media (TV, newspapers)," such as breakfast shops, hair salons, and even restaurants and restrooms.
Her friends launched a print sponsorship drive online to cover printing and distribution shipping costs, opening it freely for any non-commercial use. Extra money will be donated to the Referendum to Protect Taiwan Alliance, while Yao Yi will not take a single cent and will live off her savings until the end of July.
"As a SOHO artist, going on strike seems to have little impact on society, but at the Legislative Yuan site, seeing so many people stand up for Taiwan, students skipping class or even taking a leave of absence, and possibly facing criminal liability, I kept reflecting on what I can do for Taiwan. I hope that through comics, more people can enter this issue, and maybe I can change some things too," Yao Yi said firmly.
Speaking Frankly on the Two-State Position, Hoping Comics Open Up Space for Discussion
However, agricultural issues involve policy and foreign relations, and the answer of "eat rice to save agriculture" has also been criticized as overly simplistic. Yao Yi does not shy away from saying that comics must leave out some information, and that she is mentally prepared to be blasted, joking, "At most I'll just unplug the internet cable." But she hopes to start a conversation, first letting people understand the issue, so that those interested can search for more information, and at least open up space for discussion.
After the comics went viral online, Yao Yi and friends printed them out and handed them out on the street. Quite a few people responded that they had already seen them online, which made her happy and shy. But some also questioned that her stance was too biased against the service trade agreement. "I had a stance to begin with; everyone definitely has a stance," she said frankly. Taiwan and China are two countries to begin with, and their relationship is sensitive and special, so signing the service trade agreement cannot avoid involving politics.
From an economic point of view, she believes the starting point of the service trade agreement was different from the outset. Taiwan is a free country, while China is an authoritarian political system that can use state power to suppress, which is fundamentally unfair free trade. The agreement opens up wholesale, warehousing, freight and retail, and a one-stop business model lowers costs, which in the future will crush Taiwan's small farmers.
Although she is from a farming family, Yao Yi only vaguely remembers an embarrassing childhood incident of falling into a field while going farming with her grandfather. All of the arguments above came from cramming over those two weeks through various official materials, scholarly research and media reports, and she even personally wrote to professors asking for materials. "It was the first time in my life I studied so hard." In the process of using search software to look up the service trade agreement and agriculture, the free economic pilot zones kept following along, and "their degree of horror is not much less than the service trade agreement," which made her even more determined to draw the kind of agricultural comics rarely seen in Taiwan.
Yao Yi said that while looking up information, she discovered that Taiwan's agricultural problems are huge, and gradually changed her own consumption habits. Although with her current income she cannot buy friendly agricultural products every day, she has already tried to buy vegetables and rice directly from small farmers. She hopes that after reading the comics, everyone can also care about Taiwan's agriculture, eat one more bite of rice, and support small farmers more.