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ECFA will cause agricultural crisis in
Taiwan
By Lee Ying-yuan 李應元
Tuesday, Feb 02, 2010, Page 8
China’s Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation recently issued
an interesting report on the possible signing of an economic cooperation
framework agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China. The report said an ECFA
leaves Taiwan with too little control over imports of agricultural products and
commodities from China. The agreement, it said, would affect normal trade
between Taiwan and China and hamper further economic cooperation.
Taiwan’s government insists that an ECFA will allow it to place restrictions on
Chinese agricultural imports. The thing is, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is
pinning his hopes on the agreement to help improve his flagging approval rating
and is promising that it will be a done deal before the year is out.
Given the fact that the above warning comes from an official Chinese
institution, you would think Taiwanese farmers have good reason to be worried.
Any government worth its weight would make sure the appropriate measures were in
place before it opened up trade with another country. It would also have talked
to the industries likely to be involved, and possibly allowed a referendum, to
make sure there was some kind of consensus.
In the two years Ma has been president, he has failed to deliver a comprehensive
policy to transform agriculture, or any guidelines. Instead, he has just tried
to push an ECFA. This will not allay farmers’ fears.
Before Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin’s
(陳雲林) last visit in December, China was giving assurances it would buy Yunlin
County oranges. Since this initial undertaking, they have backtracked in the
volume they were to buy, and are offering a price lower than that asked in
Taiwan. Farmers are not happy with this. Orange exports to China exemplifies the
problems facing Taiwanese farmers. There is no way they will be able to make a
living selling to the Chinese market.
China does represent a huge market. However, the low costs of both land and
labor there means that Taiwanese imports are going to have to be sold at low
prices. Taiwan’s domestic market will also be hit if we are rash enough to open
up the field for the import of certain Chinese agricultural products. If this
happens, it’s going to be very tough for our farmers to keep their heads above
water.
Taiwan leads the way when it comes to agriculture compared with China, and
perhaps other countries, in terms of farming techniques, labor and quality
control. The government should be working to put this advantage to good use and
help our farmers move away from the small farm business model to farming
cooperatives or corporate models.
If Taiwanese farmers increase their economies of scale, they will be able to
reduce their production costs. The government should help the farmers modernize
and move into organic produce. This will have the effect of increasing their
products’ added value and, consequently, the prices they can reasonably ask.
More importantly, we need to safeguard Taiwanese agriculture’s biggest hope for
moving forward and protect our agricultural gene bank. We need, in other words,
to transform traditional agriculture in this country by embracing biotech
agriculture. This will help create a sustainable, comprehensive development
strategy. Only then will Taiwanese agriculture have a future and not be
consigned to the pursuit of a largely illusory market in China.
If the government cannot see the impending crisis in agriculture, or the changes
that lie ahead, and keeps on with this preoccupation with signing an ECFA, it
will be letting the farmers down.
On May 20, 1988, angry farmers took to the streets of Taipei to demonstrate
against deregulation in the industry. If the government is not careful, it runs
the risk of seeing a repeat performance in the near future.
Lee Ying-yuan is a former Cabinet secretary-general.
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