tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post7405565955275372593..comments2023-10-22T18:25:39.688+08:00Comments on The View from Taiwan: Expropriating here with the left hand, leasing there with the rightMichael Turtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974403961870976346noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10698887.post-56957664320409910442011-07-08T16:53:31.553+08:002011-07-08T16:53:31.553+08:00The general problem is fairly complexed, we have c...The general problem is fairly complexed, we have competiting needs here, more farmland going follow in theory means less output = higher prices. <br /><br />Agriculture export is always problematic, most countries have alot of protection barriers setup and in the case of rice Taiwan's prices are neither low enough nor numerous enough to seriously change the market.<br /><br />Due to traditional developments, most Taiwanese farmers are small land owners who only operates on their own family's manpower (and these days, more like just 1 old couple ). so it really can't compete in a scale context like the US. of course this had political / social backgrounds and it certainly beats the older days of when lands where mostly owned by a small number of landlords...<br /><br />Farmers generally make very little, even when prices are good the rice farmers especially make little (usually they'd be lucky to make about as much as a kid working in 7-11 or Mcdonald if you divide it into monthly wages. most make under 20k per month in this calculation.) Fruit and other farmers might make more but they're also much more at risk to weather and natural disastors.<br /><br /><br />Taiwan actually do produce more rice then they consume on a yearly basis even with all the follow grounds, the question would be what would we realistically do with so much additional rice? and since most farmers are small land owners a higher overall production actually HURT them more than it helps anyway.<br /><br />Alternative farming towards other products are of course a good idea, but the basic problem of Taiwan still remains, it's cost of living is at least above average, and it's land distribution is generally very well spread, thus economic of scale will almost never be too good.<br /><br />Another issue, Rice paddies are not easily interchangable into other forms of farmland, they require a lot of irrigational setup many happened over many decades / generations of work, you can not just assume that you can easily switch it back and forth between Rice crop and other stuff.<br /><br />In short, your idea is fine and dandy in theory, but in practice Taiwan's agriculture have many tough natural limitations that are difficult to address, no one have seriously been able to offer a feasable long term solution from either side. At this point, you either need to try and expand the average land hold per farmer (highly HIGHLY unlikely due to political and social reasons) or you need to have some magical crops that can make a ton more from the same land, or you need to drop everyone's standard of living to the point where Taiwan's competitive with poorer countries (obviously not a good choice either.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com