Youngsters learn local wheat culture by making toys out of wheat stalks at the Rejoice harvest event. (JP)
By June Tsai
As bakery goods have replaced rice on their breakfast tables, Taiwanese consumers have acutely felt the impact of rising international grain prices and the country’s overreliance on imported wheat.
Statistics show that since 2002, Taiwan has imported over 1 million tons of wheat every year, mainly from the United States. Taiwanese on average consumed about the same quantity of wheat products as they did the traditional staple of rice, but domestic wheat is nearly nonexistent.
In Changhua County, one man’s initiative to promote local wheat production through contract farming, now in its fourth year, has resonated among farmers and consumers attracted to his idea of “growing our own wheat using eco-friendly methods.”
“It’s been said that Taiwan’s soil and weather are not good for growing wheat, but the island’s farmers were already harvesting the crop during the Japanese colonial period [1895-1945],” said Adama Shih, owner of the Rejoice Bread Workshop in Changhua’s coastal township of Fangyuan, and the man behind the movement.
Shih opened Rejoice in 2003, first as an attempt to offer jobs to the physically or mentally impaired. The bakery built its sales channels, and reputation, via the Internet and the collective purchase network of the Homemakers’ Union Consumers Cooperative.
He then set out to learn the history of wheat farming in Taiwan out of a thirst for knowledge about the crop.
Documents show that in the 1920s wheat fields spread across Taiwan’s southwestern plains from Taichung to Tainan, Shih said. After World War II food shortages prompted the government to encourage the cultivation of various grains, particularly wheat, and in the early 1960s wheat fields covered 25,000 hectares.
In the meantime, the country became a recipient of U.S. aid in the form of wheat surpluses, and the consumption of flour products in place of rice was encouraged. The government eventually allowed the import of American wheat in 1967, and during the 1970s, U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat were imported in large quantities to balance trade. Domestic farmers could not compete and by 1974 only 304 hectares of the crop remained.
While corn and soybean production continued to decline, wheat growing got a boost in 1975, when booming liquor exports prompted the state-run Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau to contract the cultivation of wheat as a raw material for distiller’s yeast, and to guarantee purchase prices. This practice was halted in 1995, however, due to free trade pressures.
In 2007 Shih found wheat fields in Taichung’s Daya and Tainan’s Xuejia districts, with around 60 and 30 hectares, respectively, under cultivation, supplying the crop on contract to Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor Inc.
But the global food crisis that year caused the price of imported wheat to double in just a few months, prompting Shih to put his idea of self-sufficient wheat production into action.
He started a contract-farming project with one of the last two wheat farmers in Taiwan—Daya’s Chang Wen-yen—in November 2007. Chang devoted a 1-hectare field to the plan, and the HUCC preordered flour from his harvest.
With ready buyers, more farmers joined Shih’s project. The harvest grew from seven tons in 2009 to 20 in 2010. Last winter, 45 farmers throughout Taiwan took part, and with 27 hectares planted in wheat the total harvest was expected to reach 40 tons.
“We should thank the birds for what they left us,” Shih told farmers, consumers, students and activists at a harvest celebration in Fengyuan March 26.
“Our farmers kill no birds,” he said, although birds are the main threat to the wheat crop in many areas. “Nor do they use herbicides, pesticides or chemical fertilizers.” Eco-friendly farming is a requirement for participation in the network.
“These practices are good for both nature and us farmers,” Chen Wen-lung said. Chen and his wife, both in their 70s, joined the project last year, rotating wheat between their two annual crops of rice in Miaoli County’s Yuanli Township. Like other contracted farmers, the Chens recorded their production process in a computer system set up by Shih for supply chain tracking.
“Large-scale farming can help reduce damage from birds, but Shih insisted on contracting small farmers for good reasons,” said Warren Kuo, a professor at National Taiwan University’s Department of Agronomy who offered assistance to Shih’s contract farmers.
“Working with small farmers contributes to fair trade practices and helps increase farmers’ income,” Kuo said. He noted that the country’s long-time, laissez-faire crop price policy and multilayered agricultural trade have led to farming households relying on nonagricultural activities for more than 50 percent of their income.
Shih’s program highlights the government’s inertia in addressing issues concerning Taiwan’s food safety, Kuo said. Taiwan has a stunningly low rate of food self-sufficiency—32 percent, based on calorie intake from domestic production. The rate is even lower for grain alone, at 24 percent, while that for wheat is a paltry 2 percent.
“Taiwan’s arable land has been disappearing over the past several decades,” Kuo said. Current policies subsidize farmers for leaving their land fallow and transferring water and land resources to industrial and commercial uses, he pointed out.
Growing wheat between rice crops helps keep the land in good shape and diversifies the agricultural landscape, Shih said. Moreover, it creates a knowledge bank on wheat cultivation in different parts of Taiwan, with their particular moisture, temperature and soil conditions and under the varying field management techniques farmers come up with.
Shih’s attempt to promote locally grown food has won professional respect and assistance. University researchers are providing knowledge on wheat, a local mill agreed to grind the relatively small quantities of wheat produced and Uni-President Enterprise Corp.’s Central Research Institute analyzes the properties of the grain, pro bono, to improve quality.
Perhaps the most encouraging sign is the increasing participation of young farmers. “There is a big gap in experience, as only farmers over 70 have grown wheat or barley before,” said Hwang Yu-ren, 36, who expects to harvest 200 kilograms of wheat from his 0.1-hectare plot in Tainan.
A former urban planning major, Hwang said he turned to farming after seeing how the society’s drive toward rapid economic development had made arable land a market commodity rather than a life-sustaining resource. “In the face of threats from nature and the government’s negligence, farmers and consumers should help themselves,” he said.
The contract-farming project has also served to reconnect local production chains for grains other than rice. “With tight farm-to-table links being built, the best part of local wheat is its freshness,” Shih said. “Think of the mileage involved in imported wheat! Now it takes only one month from harvest to delivery to your home.”
This article first appeared in online Taiwan Today April 22, 2011.
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