'From here to modernity' : agricultural reform in Taiwan

Abstract

Following implementation of land reform in 1949-53, Taiwan has frequently been presented as a model of agricultural development planning. In 1982, Taiwanese planners announced a Second-stage Agricultural Land Reform to modify this earlier land reform and promote structural change in agriculture. Empirical analysis of the political and planning pressures which produced what many considered to be "merely a slogan" provides insight into the ideologies and operation of Taiwanese bureaucracy and lobby groups; areas which have received little attention from researchers, but are crucial to placing the Taiwan Model in perspective. The Second-stage Agricultural Land Reform (SALR) became an ordering device for existing policies of mechanisation, land consolidation, group, co-operative and entrusted farming, revision of laws pertaining to the first land reform and bankloans for the expansion of farm size. The vague and incremental nature of SALR policy is explicable in terms of historical inertia and weaknesses in the structure of agricultural planning which preclude farmer participation in policy-making. Investigation of the problems confronting rural residents in a southern Taiwan settlement indicated the inability of this policy to bring substantial improvement, as defined in terms of residents’ needs, to even a farming-system to which it appeared entirely suited. Rather, the Hakka farmers of Mei-nung had sought a familial solution to low agricultural returns in which the spatially extended-family functioned as a minature welfare-state. Educated off-spring remitted off-farm wages to dependent parents and, in turn, received child-care and other services, thereby perpetuating what many government planners deem to be an inefficient agricultural structure. The implementation of the SALR in Mei-nung was a mechanistic exercise in physical planning which overlooked the particular ecological and cultural characteristics of the settlement In short, it served only to frustrate farmers who were acutely aware of an agenda for reform: improved marketing, basic welfare guarantees (farmer health insurance and guaranteed prices) and a consistent agricultural policy to be implemented by a powerful farmers’ planning body. This thesis argues that, in the absence of a formal welfare-state, the farming sector is operating as a temporary substitute in Mei-nung, but may not be able to sustain this role much longer. Instead, the transition from familial to ‘modem’ forms of farm management will require that government undertake structural up-grading to adopt modem economic management and planning throughout the economy, as well as instituting a formal welfare support system. The simple conclusion is that the structural reform most needed in Taiwanese agriculture is democratisation of the agricultural planning process to encourage farmer faith in the future of farming. Show more