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Ma’s policies fail to
develop agriculture, panelist group says
By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter
Amid a spate of recent controversies related to agricultural development,
panelists attending an agricultural forum yesterday described President Ma Ying-jeou’s
(馬英九) agricultural policy as “unconcerned, incompetent and faithless.”
“Farmers feed the nation. Based on what has happened over the past three years,
however, I would say that the Ma administration is unconcerned with [the state
of] Taiwan’s agricultural [sector],” Lee Chin-lung (李金龍), a former Council of
Agriculture (COA) chairman under the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), told a forum organized
by the Taiwan Brain Trust think tank.
Saying that the falling price of farm produce was “unbelievable,” Lee, a
professor at National Taiwan University, added that the council was supposed to
monitor agricultural prices on weekly basis and take the initiative in keeping
those prices stable.
In 2004, Lee said, the DPP administration established a “95 percent mechanism,”
which meant the government purchased farm produce whenever the selling price
fell below 95 percent of direct production cost.
The Ma administration has failed to develop the agricultural sector, evidenced
by a reduction of agricultural output and a decrease in farm household incomes,
said Wu Ming-ming (吳明敏), a professor at Kainan University.
“The promotion of cross-strait agricultural exchanges and cooperation” is the
only thing among the “12 pledges to farmers” in his 2008 presidential campaign
that Ma has accomplished, Wu said, adding that extensive cross-strait
agricultural exchanges were probably not a positive development for Taiwan.
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