TAIPEI - Nowadays in
Taiwan anything can become very political,
even eating bananas. Overproduction of the fruit has become
an issue in the island's internal politics
and relations with mainland China.
Without a
government subsidy, banana harvest time usually
means headache time for farmers in Taiwan. The
headache, furthermore, might turn into a nightmare
next March, when the real banana-harvest season
arrives on southern Taiwan's major
farms. Evidence of an orange
oversupply is also setting off the alarm bells.
In Taiwan's frenzied media atmosphere,
senior government officials must not only
establish and implement policies, they must also
demonstrate their enthusiasm for them in front of
the cameras by eating farm produce.
For
example, Deputy Prime Minister Tsai Ing-wen was
recently taken to task on the cable news channels
for not showing enough enthusiasm for eating
bananas despite her well-known devotion to her
work.
This year banana overproduction has
escalated into a cross-strait political issue,
because of Beijing's desire to win the hearts and
souls of Taiwanese farmers, most of whom support
President Chen Shui-bian and his pro-independence
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That is
forcing the Taiwanese government to find a
solution for the longtime problem.
Starting from late May, Taiwanese farmers
began to dread their banana harvests, which forced
the average price from US$2 per kilogram down to
80 cents or even less. As part of the efforts to
stabilize the price, Prime Minister Su Tseng-chang
promoted Taiwan-grown bananas by inviting all
cabinet ministers to eat them, chanting his newly
created slogan: "Love Taiwan, eat bananas."
According to figures from the Council of
Agriculture, Taiwan's total production this year
is estimated to be 216,000 tons, up 46% from last
year's 150,000 tons. The sharp growth in
production, apart from this year's fine weather,
is specifically because of farmers' own decisions.
"Under the free economy, what to cultivate
is the farmers' decision. There is simply no way
for the government to restrain them," said Huang
Yu-tsai, director general of Council of
Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Agency (COA),
adding that the government had in fact tried to
warn farmers of the consequences of
overproduction.
Aside from urging
government officials to consume bananas, the COA
initiated the Agricultural Security Project,
creating a stage to promote bananas among schools,
private and public organizations, and even the
military.
Beijing saw this as a golden
chance to demonstrate its concern, and announced
amid an agricultural conference being held with
Taiwan's opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party on
October 16 that it would import 2,000 tons of
Taiwanese bananas.
The first shipment, 30
tons, departed for the mainland's Fujian province
on Monday, while KMT officials and legislators
urged the Taiwanese government to give a green
light to a "direct link" of banana transportation.
According to Chang Yung-cheng, secretary
general of the Taiwan Provincial Farmers
Association, which represents the KMT in the
matter, the association purchases bananas from
farmers at 30-40 US cents per kilogram, while
mainland fruit importers would pay 80 cents per
kilogram, including tariffs and shipping fees.
The DPP administration immediately accused
Beijing of implementing a "united front" tactic,
exploiting Taiwan's "banana crisis".
Mainland China itself produces some 5.6
million tons of bananas annually, and imports some
400,000 tons from the Philippines and other
nations every year.
By Thursday, wholesale
prices of bananas on mainland China's 45 major
markets, including Inner Mongolia, the
northeastern province of Liaoning, and Xinjiang,
ranged between 15 and 37 cents per kilogram.
After China's legislature in March 2005
passed the Anti-Secession Law, which stipulates it
would use force if Taiwan declared independence,
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao embarked on a charm
campaign to soften the effects of the new law. He
declared that Beijing "will take measures to boost
sales on the mainland of farm produce from Taiwan,
particularly from southern Taiwan. We will do
whatever benefits the Taiwan people," he
emphasized.
Beijing offered to lift
tariffs on 15 kinds of Taiwan-grown fruit last
year. According to Taiwan's Customs Department,
the mainland imported US$1.64 million worth of
Taiwanese fruits last year, while Japan imported
$14.85 million and the US imported $3.95 million.
Lately, Beijing has tried hard to attract
investment from Taiwanese farmers, and the
Taiwanese government has accused it of trying to
steal advanced agricultural technologies.
Since 1997 mainland China has set up nine
cross-strait agricultural experimental zones to
attract investment, including two in Fujian
province, one in Hainan, one in northeastern
China's Heilongjiang province, one in the
northwestern province of Shannxi, one in
Guangdong, and one in the northern province of
Shandong. Three more zones in Shanghai and Jiangsu
provinces and two in Sichuan were announced
recently.
Taiwanese farmers have so far
invested US$3.4 billion in the mainland. As of
late last year, the two Fujian experimental zones
alone had attracted some 1,143 Taiwanese-invested
agricultural companies introducing $1.6 billion of
total capital investment and some 1,500 kinds of
seeds. In addition, Hainan has attracted some 300
Taiwanese companies, investing more than $200
million.
Furthermore, Taiwanese farmers
and agricultural researchers have reportedly
sneaked numerous examples of the latest-developed
seeds and technologies into the mainland, raising
concerns on how Taiwan could preserve its
competitiveness.
In the meantime, Beijing
again announced another 20 "favorable policies"
toward Taiwanese farmers, including creating a
mechanism to protect Taiwanese agricultural
products' intellectual-property rights, during the
Communist Party-KMT agricultural conference in
Hainan in mid-October.
"Our main concern
is how we can react when China demands that we
open the market to them under the WTO [World Trade
Organization] mechanism," said Su Jia-chuan,
director of the COA.
Taiwanese
agricultural experts don't see the mainland as a
solution for fruit overproduction. Creating an
effective cultivation-adjustment mechanism is
rather urgent.
"Fruit is not a staple food
that we can eat all the time, and China is not our
trash bin which deserves to receive overproduced
fruits from us," said Chen Chang-jen, researcher
at the Chung Hua Institution for Economic
Research.
In the 1960s and '70s, bananas
were Taiwan's major export product, contributing
more than 10% of the island's foreign-exchange
income. But now prices tend to be high because of
high production costs and uncertainties caused by
typhoons. In 2005, Taiwan's banana exports totaled
some US$32 million, down 4.5% from 2004's $34
million, which in turn saw a sharp drop from
2003's $67 million.
The COA now plans to
request that all of the farmers register the size
of their lands and the category of agricultural
products they cultivate. The mechanism, which is
designed for adjustment, might be difficult to
realize because of farmers' concerns with the
government's possible interference.
Former
president Lee Teng-hui, who emphasized that he
doesn't oppose interactions with the mainland but
insists on mutual benefits, and some DPP
legislators are pushing an agriculture law in the
Legislative Yuan to ensure that Taiwanese
agriculture can focus on research and create a
mechanism for protecting intellectual property.
As opposed to some experts who argue that
Taiwan should simply acknowledge defeat on
agriculture and slowly downsize the industry, Lee
insisted, "Agriculture is a nation's foundation
and contributes to the nation's social safety and
stability."
Ting-I Tsai is a
Taipei-based freelance journalist.
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